‘Potted Potter’ will appeal to fans of the books, but the jokes don’t always land
As it seems to do every year around this time, Potted Potter is back at the University of Denver’s Newman Center for a short run that ends Sunday. It was a mostly full house on opening night Wednesday when the pair of performers hit the stage to race through the entire Harry Potter cannon in 70 minutes.
Playing the straight man is Paul Brown, who adopts the role of Harry himself while his partner Liam Jeavons plays the other 300 or so characters from the book and film series. If you’ve ever seen any of the shows from the Reduced Shakespeare Company — such as The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (abridged) or The Complete History of America (abridged) — you’ll have a pretty good idea of what to expect here.
Playing to packed houses around the world for the past 15 or so years, Potted Potter’s creators Dan Clarkson and Jeff Turner clearly struck gold when they took the wildly popular stories and adapted them with a generous helping of the ground trod by the Reduced Shakespeare guys. Using a spare set, a ton of props and costumes and balls-to-the-wall pacing, Potted Potter relies on a crowd well acquainted with the material, audience participation and a battery of comic bits performed in absurd fashion by just two players.
It’s all Potter all the time, with J.K. Rowling’s seven magical doorstops trimmed down to brief dashes through the plots and characters poking fun of them every step of the way with, of course, quite a few Quidditch references.
While it starts off a little slow with over-long expository introductions, Potted Potter soon gains speed as the duo settles on how they’re going to go about presenting the material. What follows is a stream of gags that veer from pretty witty (such as Liam calling a skeleton Cedric, then asking “too soon?”) to downright silly (any of the many slapstick bits or ridiculous costumes).
It’s hit or miss, with plenty of the younger audience members howling at stuff like Paul dressed up as the Golden Snitch or Liam falling in a chocolate cake. Older Potter fans were snickering at the many allusions to the source material and jabs at some of the flaws therein. Throughout the show, the pair do an excellent job keeping the audience engaged.
I walked away from it a bit disappointed that it wasn’t funnier — or that the humor had been just a little less schoolyard. I’m fine with plenty of silly, but the orange Bozo wig for Ron Weasley and similar stuff was setting the bar pretty low. Or maybe I’m just getting too old! Overall, the audience seemed to enjoy it a good deal, and it certainly makes for a fun night at the theatre that, at just over an hour, doesn’t wear out its welcome.
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