culture
Jeff and Dan and the 70-Minute Harry Potter Experience
For Potter fans, non-Potter fans, kids, adults, witches, wizards, muggles, squibs, even Parselmouths—Potted Potter is worth your hour.
Jeff Turner reads from the fourth novel as Daniel Clarkson plays a frizzy-haired Ron. Photo courtesy of Seabright Productions.
Potted Potter: The Unauthorised Harry Experience—A Parody by Dan and Jeff
Panasonic Theatre (651 Yonge Street)
February 11 to March 25
$29.95 to $99.75
The final book in the series was published four-and-a-half years ago, and the last of eight movies hit theatres this past July, and so it seemed the Harry Potter saga was over. Apparently not.
As it turns out, fans’ insatiable appetite for all things Potter results in some highly entertaining spinoffs, some of which have been helping to prolong the series’ cultural life. The most recent addition to this fan-made body of work is Potted Potter: The Unauthorized Harry Experience—A Parody by Dan and Jeff, which arrived in Toronto this week at the Panasonic Theatre after smash runs at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, in London’s West End, and across the U.K., Australia, and New Zealand. With its Toronto run already extended until March 25, the show’s success obviously has as much to do with the lasting appeal of the Harry Potter mythos as it does with its creators (and performers), British duo Jeff Turner and Daniel Clarkson. Fortunately, the latter gents make the show an extremely worthwhile use of time.
Clarkson and Turner aim to condense the entire Potter series into a 70-minute performance. Turner is the knowledgeable straight man in the role of Harry, while Clarkson is the loose cannon, charged with playing the remaining 300-and-something characters in the story. He’s aided by a variety of props: weird hats, stuffed animals, funny accents, and a set consisting of a wardrobe (leading to Narnia, obviousy), the “Forbidden Forest,” a spooky coffin, and a primary-coloured Hogwarts Express.
The show is as much about the chemistry between the two chums as it is about Harry Potter. Clarkson and Turner don’t try that hard to tell the story. (They even manage to leave Dumbledore out of the first book entirely.) And yet they make plenty of time for opening exposition, comedic bantering, and even a quidditch game with the audience (that, on opening night, got the biggest laugh). But if you haven’t yet read or seen the final installment, beware—this show requires a spoiler alert.
Directed by Richard Hurst, Potted Potter has enough jokes, tricks, and sequences to keep a young audience happy. Meanwhile, improvised bits between the two actors are sharp enough to keep older viewers entertained, too. In fact, the funniest moments are those that take Turner and Clarkson by surprise, whether it’s a mishap with a piece of chocolate cake or a joke that doesn’t quite make sense to a non-British audience. Even so, the duo’s self-deprecating wit is quick, and well-suited to us Canucks.
Potted Potter is kind of a surefire hit: source material ripe with comedic fodder, two capable (and, actually, Olivier Award–nominated) actors, and a run time of just over an hour. It’s not breaking any new ground, but it’s a fun and funny celebration of the franchise. We just hope this one doesn’t result in its own spin-off: Trimmed Twilight.