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“Harry Potter and the Cursed Child” will end its Toronto run on July 2 having set a record for longest running professional play in Canadian history, Mirvish Productions says.
When cast members take their last bows, the show will have played for 13 months and more than 425 performances at the CAA Ed Mirvish Theatre.
The production is an Olivier and Tony Award-winning sequel to J.K. Rowling’s “Harry Potter” novels, set 19 years after the events of “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.” Written by Jack Thorne, based on a story by Thorne, Rowling and director John Tiffany, it features a new Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry cohort, including Harry’s son Albus and Draco Malfoy’s son Scorpius.
It began performances in Toronto on May 31, 2022 and had its official opening on June 19, 2022 with an all-Canadian cast.
In her four-star review, Toronto Star theatre critic Karen Fricker wrote that “Simply amazing things happen in ‘Harry Potter and the Cursed Child’ … bodies fly through the air; time expands and contracts; and other-than-human creatures appear, some marvellous and some horrific. At the same time, it tells a gripping story about growing up, intergenerational family conflict, and the power of love and acceptance.”
“We are delighted with all that this production has achieved,” producer David Mirvish said in a news release. “Single-handedly it helped us relaunch large-scale theatre in Toronto after the devastation the COVID-19 pandemic wrought.
“After being shuttered for two years we wanted to play an important role in reviving Toronto’s theatre and downtown: its restaurants, hotels, shops and service industries. The big question was: would audiences return? It was ‘Harry Potter and the Cursed Child’ that definitively answered this question.
“The artistry, spectacle, scale and broad appeal of the production brought not just traditional theatregoers back, but it also attracted scores of new audiences.”
In fact, Mirvish said more than 50 per cent of the more than 600,000 people who saw “Cursed Child” in Toronto were first-time theatre attendees. And they came from every province and territory in Canada as well as the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, Germany, China, Singapore, Malaysia, Mexico and many other places.
The production also broke a box office record the week of Dec. 26 to 31, 2022, playing to 100 per cent capacity and bringing in $1,984,046 in ticket sales, which Mirvish said was the highest weekly gross for a nonmusical play in Canadian theatre history.
The Toronto “Potter” cast includes Trevor White as Harry Potter, Trish Lindstrom as Ginny Potter and Luke Kimball as Albus Potter; Gregory Prest as Ron Weasley, Antoinette Robinson as Hermione Granger and Hailey Lewis as Rose Granger-Weasley; Brad Hodder as Draco Malfoy, Thomas Mitchell Barnet as Scorpius Malfoy, Sara Farb as Delphi Diggory, Fiona Reid as Professor McGonagall and Steven Sutcliffe as Severus Snape.
Tickets are on sale for the remaining 11 weeks at mirvish.com or 1-800-461-3333.
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