And Australian audiences face their own challenge: should they snap up tickets to the original production, which ends March 27 at Melbourne’s Princess Theatre? Or take a spell and wait for the reimagined debut in May?

Over a steak frites at SoHo’s popular Balthazar’s, the show’s producer Colin Callender (a former HBO executive who began his career at London’s Royal Court Theatre) explains that the two-part version of the show was a bad fit on Broadway, where a large chunk of the audience comes in from the boroughs or further afield (70 per cent of Broadway’s box office traditionally comes from tourists).

“Now you can come into New York on a Friday night, or a Saturday night, and see [all] the show – which previously you couldn’t,” he says. “But we didn’t want to do it unless we felt we could creatively do justice to the play and protect the core of the play.”

That core is the original pitch his team used to win Rowling’s theatre rights to the first West End production. Their cue was the epilogue to the books where the hero farewells his son, Albus Severus Potter, on the train to Hogwarts. It must be tough being Harry Potter’s son, they mused. And it must be tough, too, to be Harry Potter, an orphan from a hard childhood, and navigate fatherhood.

Any fan of the Harry Potter movies can recall the iconic scene where he is introduced to his first chocolate frog. Unfortunately, it jumps out the train window before he can taste it, but the real focal point is the included trading card. All at once, Harry is introduced to wizarding candy, a hobby, moving portraits, and, of course, Professor Dumbledore. (Plus, as we recall later, the existence Dumbledore’s important friend, Nicolas Flamel.) These trading cards have now become a “collect them all” feature of recent sets – a smart move by LEGO. If you’re hunting for the cards (2×2 tiles), or completing a Hogwarts castle, you may want to consider planning your next LEGO shopping trip between October 25th and November 7th, where you can get 40452 Hogwarts Gryffindor Dorms as a free gift with any Harry Potter themed purchase over US $100 | CAN $100 | UK £100.

The LEGO Group provided The Brothers Brick with an early copy of this set for review. Providing TBB with products for review guarantees neither coverage nor positive reviews.

Unboxing the parts and instructions

The box is the same size as the Amelia Earhart gift with purchase, though her set is 203 parts and this one is only 148. While they are valued the same, that’s the price you pay for licensing I guess… The box also makes it very clear that the collectible tiles within are randomly picked.

Inside you’ll find your typical small instruction booklet along with 3 polybags a 4 loose items: a tan 1×16 brick, a tan 1×14 brick with a garage door groove, a dark tan 8×16 plate, and a medium nougat 8×8 plate.

This set contains 4 of the 16 available collectible trading card tiles. It’s a bit of a big deal if you’re a collector, because comparably, only two other sets contain as many – 76388 Hogsmeade Village (an $80USD set) and 76389 Hogwarts Chamber of Secrets (a $130USD set). They have 4 and 6 tiles respectively. Of course, with the random nature of the tiles, you could technically buy the entire line of Harry Potter sets and not get a complete lot of 16. Naturally, the tiles were first to be sorted from the polybags, and this particular kit came with Godric Gryffindor, Salazar Slytherin, Seraphina Picquery, and Garrick Ollivander.

Because this is the Gryffindor dorm room, it’s quite fitting that it comes with him. It wouldn’t be surprising if he was “randomly” in every copy of this set, but that’s probably not the case. The Slytherin tile is disappointing, as the printing is a bit off. A few of the lines look a little broken or smudged, and the black space behind him didn’t get completely filled in. He also doesn’t look angry or scary enough. On the other hand, Seraphina Picquery (the President of the Magical Congress of the US in Fantastic Beasts) and Ollivander the wandmaker both look crisp. Although, Seraphina is portrayed with light skin complexion, while she is an African American woman.

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The build

As expected, the larger of the plates lay the groundwork for the tiny dorm room, complete with columns and a rug featuring the house colors of Gryffindor. The sides are nearly identical, except for a couple of decorative medium nougat bricks.

Next, we build a pair of mirrored sections. The reddish-brown lattice-style fences make great castle windows. Sandwiched between the windows of each section is a black modified 2×8 plate with a rail. They stick out into the room with their rails facing each other.

Between the window sections is a simple tan window panel, completed on each end with medium nougat profile bricks, just to make it interesting. It’s all held together with that long 1×16 brick and dark tan tiles.

Now that our room is finished, it’s time for the furniture. Along with a simple trunk (treasure chest), a letter, and a candle, is a pair of four-poster beds. They’re cute, though they miss the fancy draped canopies. On one hand, these are really nice little models for being so small. The pearl gold lightsaber hilts give them great detail. On the other, there are questions. Was there really no way to add drapes? And how were the colors chosen? Perhaps the fact that the hilt doesn’t come in reddish-brown was part of it. Also, pearl gold and red are a bit more interesting than simply dark red and brown, like the real ones.

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The finished model

Once the furniture is in, the place becomes a little cramped but cozy. Unfortunately, the trunk doesn’t contain anything. But the beds are easy to access through the archways on the sides.

Speaking of those archways, I’d never really paid attention to how lovely this mold is. Instead of your average cross-bracing, element designers gave this one an eloquent swirl. It’s a nice bit of detail in a focal point that might otherwise be boring.

Both sides also have 1×1 bricks with holes, which, when inserted with a pin, allows this set to be connected with others in the modular Hogwarts line. They’re not very visible, so this is nitpicky, but it’s odd that these bricks aren’t tan to blend in, as it’s not an uncommon part. (Even showing up in other HP sets this year.)

A dorm is not a home without students hanging stuff on the wall. In the movies, the boys typically had Quidditch memorabilia on the walls, but in LEGO, this a perfect environment for the chocolate frog trading card tiles. The 8×8 plate slots perfectly into those aforementioned rails, and has enough room to accommodate all 16 possible tiles.

Because the chest/trunk sits on a jumper plate, it allows room for the tiles to slide behind it. Nifty, although you won’t be able to see/display them very well that way. At least the wall behind it isn’t entirely empty or uninteresting in case you rather not display it this way.

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The minifigures

It’s always nice to have a couple more good figs in your collection, although these ones aren’t overly exciting. From head to toe, all of their parts have been in more than one other set. But again, having more decent figs, even if it’s just for parts, is a win.

We’ll start with a look at Harry. He sports a dark red flannel with a blue-grey undershirt. On the bottom, he has short dark grey legs. His trademark tousled black hair conceals the back of a dual-sided head. On one side Harry is smiling, while on the other he looks shocked. He also carries his customary dark brown wand.

Ron wears a wrinkled, dark tan sweater with thin stripes or ribs and a red shirt underneath. In addition, he has dark brown legs. And like Harry, his face is dual-sided. One shows a smirking smile while the other looks terrified. He also has the trademark Weasley freckles on his cheeks. Ron’s hair is interesting to note because the mold line is really obvious in this copy. You can easily see and feel it in the form of a crown or halo ridge.

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Conclusions and recommendations

So you’re wondering if you should shell out a hundred bucks to get this freebie. Well, the holidays are swiftly approaching. If you were already planning on making a Harry Potter themed purchase soon (perhaps 76391 Hogwarts Icons Collectors’ Edition or another you might have missed from the Harry Potter summer wave) it would certainly be worth the opportunity to snag a little extra bang for your buck. In particular, if you want to collect all of the trading tiles, this gives you a great shot at getting closer to completing the set.

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LEGO Harry Potter 40252 Hogwarts Gryffindor Dorms includes 148 pieces and 2 minifigs. Though the website suggests the value to be $29.99 USD, it will not be offered for individual sale. Instead, this Gift with Purchase (GWP) will come with a qualifying Harry Potter themed purchase of  US $100 | CAN $100 | UK £100 or more. It will be available between October 25th and November 7th.

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Until this time, King had largely addressed the environmental crisis as a series of single issues: palm oil, animal rights, poverty. After a time, however, he realised that the common causal factor behind most of these challenges was food. The world’s insatiable craving for protein had created industrial animal agriculture, a behemoth whose byproducts included deforestation, biodiversity loss and climate chaos. Change the food system, and you change the whole equation. (King, for his part, follows an almost entirely plant-based diet, allowing himself the odd oyster and clam, since bivalves “don’t have brains or an environmental impact”.)

Part of King’s pitch is that plant-based proteins means producing more food, not less. It also subverts consumer behaviour.

Food Frontier is run by a young, tight-knit team of six, and is based in a co-working space in North Melbourne. Funded by grants and donations, it was driven from the outset by a determination to reach across the ideological divide. “I remember in 2018 giving one of my first presentations for Food Frontier in Wodonga at an agricultural conference to 150 farmers,” King says. “I was a little hesitant – they’d see alternative proteins as a threat, but the interest was very strong. They reflected back to me the same respect and openness and curiosity that I tried to bring to that interaction.”

Part of King’s pitch is that plant-based proteins means producing more food, not less. It also subverts consumer behaviour. “Traditionally it’s been thought that attitude change leads to behaviour change, but often it’s the other way around,” he said during a recent interview on ABC TV. “When people have options to make better choices, then they come around to it in their thinking.”

Of course, this depends on having plant-based options that people actually want to eat, which is where “chicken bites” come in. Precision fermentation offers similar promise. Precision fermentation is the engineering of microorganisms like yeast and bacteria to produce complex organic molecules, like protein. The CSIRO is using precision fermentation to produce the same caseins and whey proteins that are found in cow’s milk, without the need for milking facilities and huge herds of gassy bovines. Together with venture capital funding, the CSIRO has created a start-up called Eden Brew, which hopes to be selling the first batch of animal-free dairy by late 2022.

The CSIRO is fast becoming one of the driving forces behind meat alternatives. In 2019, the CSIRO and Jack Cowin, founder of the Hungry Jack’s burger chain, were among the chief financial backers of v2food, an Australian start-up, which is developing plant-based products made from legumes. “The last taste test I had, I thought they were tricking me,” Cowin told The Sydney Morning Herald at the time. “Over the decades I’ve eaten probably as many hamburgers as anyone has in this country. When you taste it, people won’t be able to tell the difference.”

The meat alternative created by v2food is now used in Hungry Jack’s Rebel Whopper burgers and sold in supermarkets across Australia. v2food, which recently expanded into China and Europe, has a number of projects on the go with the CSIRO, spanning nutrition, protein-extraction technology and flavour and structure work.

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When he was younger, King hid his age, fearing that people wouldn’t take him seriously. “People have this idea that young people’s ideas are less worthy because they have less life experience,” he told the ABC. “But that’s silly because almost all of the problems we face come back to inherited thinking. Young people aren’t conditioned by structures, so they are more able to challenge the status quo.”

But thinking differently comes with risks, especially if you’re only 25. “It’s sometimes called the entrepreneurial trap,” says Jan Owen, who met King in 2016, when she was CEO of the Foundation for Young Australians. “It’s very lonely when you’re doing something at the bleeding edge.”

Future foods and alternative proteins have gone ahead in “leaps and bounds” in the past five years, says Owen. “And leading that is terrifying because you’re way out in front, saying stuff no one wants to hear or believe.”

You can even upset your allies, as when King suggested to Bob Geldof at the EAT Stockholm Food Forum in 2017 that at least some of the answers to climate change might lie in science. “Business and science won’t fix this!” Geldof yelled. “They are the problem!”

Climate change is an urgent issue, but King is cognisant of keeping a cool head. It was Winston Churchill, he reminds me, who first predicted lab-grown meat in a 1931 essay. Within 50 years, and under the right conditions, wrote Churchill, “we shall escape the absurdity of growing a whole chicken in order to eat the breast or wing, by growing these parts separately under a suitable medium”.

Churchill was out by 40 years. But King has a prediction of his own. “By the time I’m in my 40s, what we consider today to be ‘alternative proteins’ will not be called alternative,” he says. “It’ll just be called food.”

To read more from Good Weekend magazine, visit our page at The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age and Brisbane Times.

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Melbourne is high on the list of cities in talks to host a production of one of Broadway’s newest and most controversial shows: MJ the Musical, a jukebox stuffed with talent and hits, but empty of references to dead superstar Michael Jackson’s history of child sexual abuse allegations.

The musical, starring Broadway newcomer Myles Frost, officially opened at New York’s Neil Simon Theatre on February 1. It was met with a barrage of critical reviews: Variety called it a “slick, crotch-grabbing sidestep” around Jackson’s “complex legacy”, and The New York Times said writer Lynn Nottage – the first woman in history to win two drama Pulitzers – had compromised by “noting [Jackson’s] minor oddities while avoiding the most troubling accusations against him”.

However, reviewers also praised the show’s superbly talented cast and energetic direction by acclaimed ballet choreographer Christopher Wheeldon.

On the night this masthead visited, a full house whooped its approval, during and at the climax of the performance. The audience was notably more diverse than the average house for an expensive Broadway production: Jackson remains a superhero in black culture, and the show emphasises the trail he blazed for inclusivity in the music business.

The Broadway actor who played Harry Potter in “Harry Potter and the Cursed Child” has been fired following a complaint about his conduct lodged by a co-star last year.

The show’s producers made the announcement Sunday night without specifying the allegations made against actor James Snyder.

A female co-star made the claims last November, prompting an independent investigation, the producers said.

Snyder had been suspended after the accusations and the woman took a leave of absence from the show.

“Harry Potter and the Cursed Child,” which won a Tony Award for best new play in 2018, portrays Potter and his wizard pals as grown-ups.

“We are committed to fostering a safe and inclusive workplace, which is why we have robust workplace policies and procedures in place for all those involved in ‘Harry Potter and the Cursed Child,’” the statement by producers said.

“We will continue to do all we can to ensure the extremely talented team that brings this production to life feels safe, empowered, and fully supported,” the producers said.

With Post wires

“Harry Potter” films as Ron Weasley, Rupert Grint says J.K. Rowling has become like a family member to him — though perhaps a problematic one.

During an interview with The Times published Saturday, Grint, 33, likened Rowling, 56, to an “auntie.”

“I don’t necessarily agree with everything my auntie says, but she’s still my auntie. It’s a tricky one,” Grint said. 

Rowling continues to be a source of controversy after making headlines in 2020 with multiple posts online voicing opinions on the transgender community that conflated sex with gender and defended ideas suggesting that changing one’s biological sex threatens her own gender identity. She has doubled down even after the posts were widely perceived as transphobic, misinformative and hurtful. 

‘Harry Potter’ reunion: How it addresses author J.K. Rowling’s anti-trans controversy

Grint later explained in an Esquire interview published March 2021, that he still is “hugely grateful” for the acclaimed author, though he can still disagree with her views.

“I am hugely grateful (for) everything that she’s done. I think that she’s extremely talented, and I mean, clearly, her works are genius,” he said. “But yeah, I think also you can have huge respect for someone and still disagree with things like that.”

“Harry Potter 20th Anniversary: Return to Hogwarts.” Though she does not make a new appearance, the special included archival footage of Rowling from 2019 and featured new clips of the cast celebrating her books’ legacy and sharing how directions from the author influenced their performances. 

Here’s what the rest of the “Harry Potter” franchise cast and crew has said about Rowling’s comments.

Amanda and Jenn discuss romantic power dynamics, Only Murders in the Building read-alikes, the Amish, and more in this week’s episode of Get Booked.

Follow the podcast via RSS, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or Stitcher.

Feedback

The Air You Breathe by Frances de Pontes Peebles (rec’d by Stephanie)

The Blind Owl by Sadegh Hedayat (rec’d by Aida)

The Watchmaker of Filigree St. by Natasha Pulley (rec’d by Kelly)

Questions

I just finished Only Murders in the Building. While I anxiously wait for season 2, I’m hoping you can recommend some books that will scratch that itch.

Thank you!

-Jessica

2. Hello ladies! I love the podcast and frequently listen on my commute. After an overnight shift this week, I was commuting home and listening to your Podcast while driving through Amish country. I was behind a carriage once again wondering what the etiquette is- should I pass, should I just drive slowly behind? What are their lives like? When it dawned on me that I should write and ask you for a recommendation for a good read that takes place in the  Amish community. I’d also be ok with any genre as long as it is own voices, but fiction preferred.

-Jennie

3. I read The Midnight Bargain by CL Polk as an arc last summer and have not been able to stop talking about it since. Do you have any comps?

Siobhan

4. I’m in a reading slump (who isn’t these days?) and kind of depressed.  I think I may have found a way out by reading gothics (the last thing I read was The Unsuitable by Pohlig), but I want something light to mix in.  Something that will make me laugh out loud.  I tried Furiously Happy, because I loved Let’s Pretend This Never Happened, but I’m not feeling Jenny Lawson this time around.  I like speculative fiction, but lately I’m more into books that read *like* spec fic but aren’t quite spec fic, or that are fiction +), folklore, history, social sciences, books that give you the did-you-knows, and horror. But I’ll give anything a try if you think it will make me laugh.

-Lisa

5. I recently picked up “Soulless” by Gail Carriger, fell completely in love, and proceeded to devour the entire Parasol Protectorate series.  I would love to read more like it, but I’ve previously never gravitated to the steampunk/paranormal romance genre and am paralyzed as to where to go next.  I’d prefer for it to be geared toward adults.  Any recommendations for a fast-paced, fantasy-adjacent series that is a bit silly and mildly saucy?

-Mary

6. I’ve recently fallen down a rabbit hole of watching The Vampire Diaries and am enjoying the dynamic between two of the characters, Klaus and Caroline. (Please don’t @ me, I know it has problematic elements). Basically, I’m wondering if you guys have recommendations for books that might have a similar dynamic: powerful, maybe dark dude that is a little obsessed/in love with/has feels for a female character that comes into her own power, or is able to match him in some way. I tend to stick to literary fiction or historical/political non-fiction but am willing to expand into genres. Not really looking for a straight romance novel. I recently read Deathless by Catherynne M. Valente and that sort of hit the mark, but not stuck on it being fantasy/fairytale. Would prefer no vampires. 

-Jordan

7. Hello! I am looking for new reads that are set in magical schools or universities. I love the trope of going away to a boarding school where everything you’ve thought was true turns out to be wrong and mysterious *somethings* lurk around every corner, waiting to be discovered. However, I’m not into YA or middle grade books. I liked Harry Potter and (as a kid) the Chrestomanci  Chronicles, but what I’m really looking for is a comp for The Magicians. I recently read The Ninth Gate by Leigh Bardugo and immediately adored it but found that I could not get into her YA writing. Near misses include The Name of the Wind (not enough women), The Queen of Blood (too much teen angst), A Discovery of Witches (just…not for me), and a bunch of the other adult titles on your handy “books featuring magic schools” list. In general, I like literary or challenging books and immediately get annoyed with one-dimensional characters. Thank you, and keep being awesome-your suggestions have expanded my reading immensely and your show is an absolute delight. 

-Brenna

Books Discussed

The Thursday Murder Club by Richard Osman

An Elderly Lady Is Up to No Good by Helene Tursten, transl. by Marlaine Delargy

Plain Secrets by Joe Mackall

When the English Fall by David Williams (rec’d by Margaret)

The Bone Witch by Rin Chupeco but also just read Witchmark

Dead Djinn Universe books by P. Djeli Clark

The Wisteria Society of Lady Scoundrels by India Holton

River of Teeth by Sarah Gailey

London Steampunk by Bec McMaster

Midnight Bargain by CL Polk

Iron Widow by (tw: rape) Xiran Jay Zhao

The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms by NK Jemisin (cw: sexual assault, enslavement and coercion)

Catherine House by Elisabeth Thomas

Poppy War by RF Kuang (cw: BASICALLY EVERYTHING)

Harry Potter is a franchise beloved by fans all around the globe. Beyond the original series of books written by J.K. Rowling and the movies, there have been multiple spin-offs as well. There was even a two-part play, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, which premiered in 2016. Notable, however, was the polarising reception from the Harry Potter fandom.

Now, Chris Columbus, director of the first two films of the franchise, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone and Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, has voiced his interest in directing a film adaptation of The Cursed Child in an interview with Variety.

“I would love to direct The Cursed Child. It’s a great play and the kids are actually the right age to play those roles. It’s a small fantasy of mine,” he said.

The original trio, Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson, and Rupert Grint, who played Harry Potter, Hermione Granger, and Ron Weasley respectively, are the right age if they were to reprise their roles for the adaptation.

Harry Potter and the Cursed Child is set after the events of the last book of the main series, which shows the future life of the characters and their children, and how the Wizarding World changes after all the events that fans have become familiar with through the years.

While this is no confirmation of the adaptation becoming reality, with a director who has directed two films in the series expressing interest, one can’t help but hope that this will become more than a passing remark.

Brandon shapeshifts between being a nerd and a geek like Mystique, but with fewer options. He reads an unhealthy amount of comics and manga, while playing a healthy amount of board games and video games.

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How cool would it be if you could instruct your iPhone with Harry Potter commands and it responds! Cool, right? Turns out that you can do the same and your iPhone obeys you like the magic at Hogwarts. And all you need to make it happen is invoke the humble Siri. On an iPhone running on the latest version of iOS, you can make certain Harry Potter magic spells to certain things.

Of course, this requires you to remember all of the magic spells from the movie, or the book. And the commands are all logical – you can use some of them to do basic things such as light up the flashlight, or make your iPhone go all silent.

Hence, if you are a Harry Potter fan and want to witness some of the magic on your iPhone, here are some commands you can try today. Just don’t try “Wingardium Levio-saaaaaa” – it won’t make your iPhone levitate.

Harry Potter spells on your iPhone

Here are some of the commands you can have fun with. Note that you will need to enable “Hey Siri” from the Settings to make it feel like magic.

-Say “Hey Siri, Lumos”. This will turn on the flashlight of your iPhone.

– Say “Hey Siri, Nox”. This will turn off the flashlight.

You can also program custom Harry Potter commands into Siri on your iPhone and you can eventually have a full Harry Potter experience. For this, you need to create new commands and here’s how you can do it.

With help from machine learning software, computer scientists may have unmasked the identity of Q, the founder of the QAnon movement. In a sprawling report published on Saturday, The New York Times shared the findings of two independent teams of forensic linguists who claim they’ve identified Paul Furber, a South African software developer who was one of the first to draw attention to the conspiracy theory, as the original writer behind Q. They say Arizona congressional candidate Ron Watkins also wrote under the pseudonym, first by collaborating with Furber and then later taking over the account when it eventually moved to post on his father’s 8chan message board.

The two teams of Swiss and French researchers used different methodologies to come to the same conclusion. The Swiss one, made up of two researchers from startup OrphAnalytics, used software to break down Q’s missives into patterns of three-character sequences. They then tracked how often those sequences repeated. The French team, meanwhile, trained an AI to look for patterns in Q’s writing. Both techniques broadly fall under an approach known as stylometry that looks to analyze writing in a way that is measurable, consistent and replicable. To avoid the possibility of confusing their respective programs, the teams limited their analysis to social media posts. Among all the other possible authors they put through the test, they say the writing of Furber and Watkins stood out the most for how similar it was that of Q’s.

And they’re confident in that identification. The French team made of computational linguists Florian Cafiero and Jean-Baptiste Camps told The Times their software correctly identified Furber’s writing in 98 percent of tests and Watkins’ in 99 percent. “At first most of the text is by Furber,” said Cafiero. “But the signature of Ron Watkins increased during the first few months as Paul Furber decreased and then dropped completely.”

People have previously used machine learning software to identify Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling as the secret writer of Cuckoo’s Calling, a 2013 crime fiction novel Rowling wrote under the pseudonym Robert Galbraith. More broadly, law enforcement agencies have successfully used stylometry in a variety of criminal cases, including by the FBI to show that Ted Kaczynski was the Unabomber.

Experts The Times spoke to – including Professor Patrick Juola, the computer scientist who identified Rowling as the author of Cuckoo’s Calling – told they found the findings credible and persuasive. “What’s really powerful is the fact that both of the two independent analyses showed the same overall pattern,” Juola said.

Both Furber and Watkins deny they wrote any of Q’s messages. “I am not Q,” the latter told The Times. Furber, meanwhile, said he was influenced by Q’s posts to change the style of his prose, a claim linguistic experts told the outlet was “implausible.” Also worth mentioning is the fact the analysis included tweets from Furber that date from the earliest days of Q’s existence.

What happens next is unclear. The researchers who worked on the identification told The Times they hope unmasking Q will loosen QAnon’s hold on people. Spreading like wildfire on social media, the conspiracy theory has had a profound effect on politics in the US and other parts of the world. And while Q hasn’t posted a new message since the end of 2020, that hasn’t dampened people’s enthusiasm for conspiracies about the “deep state” and its involvement in their lives.