Harry Potter and the Cursed Child may be the most magical production coming to Broadway next year, but it’s doing everything it can to be as Muggle-friendly as possible when it comes to getting tickets.
Considered the official eighth part of the Harry Potter series despite not having been written by J.K. Rowling (though she co-created the story), the play will open on Broadway in Spring 2018 with all seven main members of its original London cast.
For those of you in the seats, the producers announced that 300 tickets priced at $40 or under, including 150 seats at $20, will be available for every performance.
In addition, the play will bring its popular Friday Forty program to NYC, in which 40 tickets priced at $20 each for some of the “very best seats in the theater” will become available at 1 p.m. every week through the show’s website.
These are much more generous allotments than Broadway productions usually make for similarly priced seats. Note, however, that they’re usually for less-than-perfect front row, obstructed or mezzanine views, and the production is extensively renovating the Lyric Theater presumably to be more like its London home, which has many such seats.
That said, this is still a very generous deal for a show with guaranteed Hamilton-level sales. Especially because if you want to see the whole play, you’ll have to spring for two tickets: Harry Potter and the Cursed Child is split into Part One and Part Two, which can be seen on separate nights or same-day matinee and evening performances.
To help cut down on scalping and bots snapping up tickets, you’ll have to register to buy tickets through Ticketmaster’s Verified Fan program. This process will be open from Sunday, Oct. 1, at 10 a.m. through Thursday, Oct. 5, at 10 p.m., and grants you an access code for a first-come, first-served chance to buy tickets when sales begin on Wednesday, Oct. 18, at 11 a.m.
Tickets will be priced from $20 to $199 (and more for premium seats) per part for preview performances starting March 16, 2018; opening night is set for April 22, 2018, with tickets available through Nov. 18, 2018 during the initial sale.
“From the start of our journey bringing Harry Potter and the Cursed Child to the stage, it’s been a priority to get tickets into the hands of theatergoers,” said producers Sonia Friedman and Colin Callender in a statement.
Emphasizing the large number of discounted seats, they continued: “As in London, where a large percentage of our audience are first-time theatergoers, tickets will be available at a wide range of prices across all performances, to allow as much flexibility as possible.”
Harry Potter and the Cursed child was co-created by J.K. Rowling, John Tiffany and Jack Thorne. The play was written by Thorne and directed by Tiffany; it premiered in July 2016 at London’s Palace Theatre, where it’s still practically impossible to get tickets to a performance.
Besides being naturally popular with fans of the most popular children’s book series of all time, the play is also critically beloved and holds the record for most-awarded show in Olivier history, including Best New Play.
Here’s the synopsis, in case you haven’t read the script:
“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 the father of three school-age children. While Harry grapples with a past that refuses to stay where it belongs, 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.”
You’ll also want to set aside a few galleons for the major exhibit of Potter artifacts and paraphernalia from the British Library coming to the New-York Historical Society next fall.
