This is part of a series of shorter reviews from Edinburgh Fringe, August 2024.
The unofficial improvised Harry Potter show, “Spontaneous Potter”, sees the cast take a suggestion for a lost Harry Potter book from the audience and create an entirely original story on the spot. I’ve seen the show previously (check out my review here), but since my sister is such a big Harry Potter fan (just ask her what colour dress Hermione wears to the Yule Ball), I had to introduce her to this fantastic production.
On the performance that we saw, the group (Will Naameh, Mara Joy, Sam Irving and Paul Connolly, with musical accompaniment from Jenny Laahs) created a show entitled “Harry Potter and the Australian Break dancer” – a suggestion based on recent news surrounding Olympic Break dancer Raygun. The story began with Voldemort and Lucius planning an evil scheme to kill Harry Potter during a break dancing competition (of course). They then enlisted the help of Australian Johnny B to teach Draco how to break dance.
The players set up several storylines, that they then bring together at the end. Alongside the break dancing storyline, there was also Ginny trying to break up with Harry, but they kept getting interrupted by Hagrid, and Dobby accidentally killing Hedwig with a pistol (later in the show, Winky appeared with an AK-47).
As you can probably tell, the show borrows very loosely from the books, and there is a great deal of silliness. The humour may not be to everyone’s tastes. Flashbacks upon flashbacks lead us to greater levels of absurdity, and there felt like a few moments where the players were purposely trying to convolute the plot just to wind each other up, which led to greater confusion in the scenes. Sometimes I felt it would have been better to move the plot along, rather than looking for an additional joke that then left the scene with nowhere else to go.
This is a very funny show, and if you can accept the silliness and not take it too seriously, then there is a lot to enjoy about this. If you aren’t a fan of Harry Potter, you might struggle to understand the jokes, but if you are a fan, then this is definitely a must-see.
Tom Morley, August 2024
“Spontaneous Potter” plays at Assembly Rooms – Bijou at 5:30pm until 25th August.
Broken Legs Blog 