Harry Potter and the Cursed Child: Potter gets ready for the stage as a middle-aged father of three

When Harry Potter steps out on to the West End stage next year, fans may be in for a shock

The play’s writer, Jack Thorne (left), JK Rowling and director John Tiffany. (Debra Hurford Brown)

Even boy wizards, it seems, must leave the glory days behind them and succumb to the drudgery of middle-aged routine and parenthood.

So when Harry Potter steps out on to the West End stage next year for the eighth instalment of the billion-dollar franchise, fans may be in for a shock. Their hero will tread the boards not as a lively apprentice wizard, but an overworked father of three.

Some had hoped Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, the first official theatrical adaptation, would focus on Harry’s teenage years. It will follow on from the epilogue to the series in JK Rowling’s final book, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, where the grown-up characters, including Ron and Hermione, packed off their children to Hogwarts.

Rowling revealed that it would be set 19 years after Lord Voldemort’s defeat. She added: “I’m confident that when audiences see Harry Potter and the Cursed Child they will understand why we chose to tell the story in this way.”

The creative team produced a brief plot teaser that gave little away, saying: “It was always difficult being Harry Potter and it isn’t much easier now that he is an overworked employee of the Ministry of Magic, a husband and father of three school-age children.”

As Harry grapples with a past that “refuses to stay where it belongs”, they continued, “his youngest son, Albus, must struggle with the weight of a family legacy he never wanted. As past and present fuse ominously, both father and son learn the uncomfortable truth: sometimes, darkness comes from unexpected places.”

Harry Potter and the Cursed Child is based on an original story by Rowling and written by Jack Thorne, with John Tiffany directing. Thorne and Tiffany previously collaborated on the stage adaptation of Let the Right One In, a Swedish novel about a bulllied boy who befriends a vampire.

In a joint statement, they said it was “exciting to explore Harry’s world in a brand new way through the live form of theatre. Collaborating on this story is exhilarating for all of us.” When the play was first announced, Rowling said it was a play not a novel because “it was the only proper medium for the story”.

It will feature a cast of 30, though the principal actors are yet to be announced. It will open in London’s Palace Theatre next summer in two parts. Like the theatrical adaptations of Wolf Hall and Bring up the Bodies, it will be designed to be seen either on a single day or on consecutive nights.

Producer Sonia Friedman said regular tickets would start at £15 for each part and weekly and daily lotteries would make it accessible. Tickets will sell for up to £130 for both.

Work continues on a film of Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, a spin-off of the Harry Potter books which stars Eddie Redmayne and is due out in November next year.