Paterson brings dark arts to life in Harry Potter and the Cursed Child

Geelong-born actor David Ross Paterson has been with Harry Potter and the Cursed Child from the start, and says the revamped play will still surprise those who have seen the two-part version.

The on-stage sequel to the enormously successful series of books by J.K. Rowling and their film adaptations, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child opened in Melbourne in February 2019 and ran in two parts until March 27 this year, before reopening about six weeks later as a one-show production.

“It’s pretty demanding! It’s great for the audience, I think, as it creates a pretty spectacular show,” Paterson said.

“The two previous parts were about two hours and 45 minutes each; now we’ve got a single three-and-a-half hour show, which pretty much packs all the magic and all the fun and colour that was spread over the two shows into one.

“Everything is accelerated, everything is pretty wound up and ready to go – it’s a pretty dynamic night of theatre, really, so I think people are enjoying it.”

He plays two of the biggest characters in the Harry Potter universe – the titular character’s nemesis, Voldemort; and enigmatic teacher Professor Snape.

Paterson also portrayed Uncle Vernon in the original production.

Audiences of the two-part version will remember Voldemort’s big scene towards the climax of the play.

Paterson was careful to avoid spoilers when talking about the moment where Voldemort “might get closer to people than they were originally anticipating” and said “I can neither confirm nor deny, but I don’t think people will be disappointed”.

“You won’t find this in the program, you won’t get this from any official source, but I do in fact portray Harry Potter in the show. I won’t go into the detail, I won’t go into how this is achieved – but somehow, this 60-plus-year-old does have a turn at actually playing Harry Potter.”

Paterson was “born and bred on the mean streets of Drumcondra”, in his words, and originally studied at Geelong Teachers College, but his first professional acting gig was in 1996, in a production of My Fair Lady in a converted barn in the US state of Maine.

He said Geelong theatre stalwart and Order of Australia Medal recipient Ken Hemmens had encouraged him to pursue his acting dreams further.

“I went and taught for 13 years, but the little acting bug had been nibbling away in the background, so I ended up going over to New York to train.”

His acting credits since then include Saving Mr Banks, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and Frost/Nixon on the big screen, and MTC’s The Odd Couple and The Production Company’s Funny Girl in the theatre.

Paterson has been part of the Cursed Child cast since rehearsals began in October 2018, and said he started at “the less familiar end of the spectrum” with the Harry Potter universe but has learnt a lot since then.

“Some of the cast members and crew are absolutely encyclopedic in their knowledge of Harry Potter.

“The thing I find really amazing is that you’ve got people coming along, whether they’re real Harry Potter aficionados or not, whether their impression of the whole universe are established through either their experiences of the books and the limitless capacity of the imagination to come up with the images and the pictures you can get about that world, or the films, which were multi-million-dollar computer-generated films with profound special effects, and here they are coming along to our little horse-and-pony show in the theatre, and they’re not being let down.

“The magic is still there – the creators of the show have come up with something that stands up alongside those.”

Harry Potter and the Cursed Child is now showing at Melbourne’s Princess Theatre.

For more information and tickets, head to au.harrypottertheplay.com