My god, what is this? The B-movie no one really wanted to see? The sequel no one actually asked for? 
 And above all: who is responsible for this embarrassing heap of cheesiness and drama? 
 With its star-crossed friendship (or love?), illegitimate children and ridicule dialogue Harry Potter and the Cursed Child reminds more of a mushy soap-opera than the eighth part of the saga everybody loved so much. 
 I'm afraid that in the years following The Deathly Hollows, J.K.Rowling spent too much time reading fan's theories and doubts or responding to the incessant criticism which led her to write a story that clearly wants to appease everybody but is actually an insult to her previous works. 
 First of all none of the characters resemble those described in the book: many argued that Harry should have been a much more traumatized child, considering the many horrible events he witnessed in his childhood (a theory I don't particularly agree with) so Rowling and her co-writers decided to depict a forty year old man with an important job at the Ministry of Magic who has still nightmares about his past and who can't develop a real relationship with his middle son for reasons that remain basically unknown throughout the whole story. Not satisfied, they also gave him "b-movie" lines such as "I wish you weren't my son" or "I forbid you to see him again" that not only sound ridiculous, they also don't belong to the character we are used to know. 
 A worse service is done to Ron who is here reduced to a dopey prankster who appears on the scene only to deliver inane comments which dramatically fail to be funny. 
 Everybody else - Hermione, Ginny, Professor McGonagall - are just faded shadows of their past selves with little to none personality. 
 A curious exception is given by the two bad boys of the saga: Malfoy and Snape. Again: has Rowling been reading too many fanfiction? Did she grow tired of explaining Snapes' good side or that the moral of the saga was not so black and white as many accused it to be? It would seem so since in this new play she never gets tired of showing what a good-hearted, misunderstood man Draco Malfoy is with his wise, tolerant, mature opinions. Thanks to the many time-travels of the plot we also get a glimpse of old Snape, who promptly reminds us that his pure, eternal love for Lily Potter made him a really good guy in the end. 
 On the positive side I actually liked Albus: giving Harry Potter a Slitheryn son who can't play Quidditch and is basically a nerd was really well played by the authors and his friendship with Malfoy's son, if a bit predictable, was still endearing and funny; a pity that also here Rowling & co. felt the need to drown everything in cheesiness with so many syrupy declarations of eternal friendship that they almost made me sick (and I can't picture the "old" Rowling approving lines so corny!). To be honest I smelled a bit of romance between the two but apparently Rowling didn't feel comfortable enough to go with it. 
 I understand that this is a play and not a novel and by merely reading instead of watching it I'm certainly losing some of its charm but still its flaws remain and can't be ignored. Apart from the flat, banal, cheesy dialogues and the total absence of characters' in-depth analysis, the plot is awkward and repetitive, uncharacteristically rich in holes and inconsistencies. 
 Also the structure seems too much fragmentary, the number of scenes excessive, especially in the first part where we keep changing scene but we still meet the same characters in the same spot. 
 I really missed Rowling prose, her witty remarks and her creativity: despite introducing new characters this play doesn't really add anything to the story and to the wizarding world in general. We have already read about all of this, in a much better form. 
 The plot in general doesn't really make much sense: maybe a novel could have developed all this better but here many of the characters motivations seem futile and illogically performed and this is particularly true for the villain of this story who really lacks in personality and brain. 
 While reading Harry Potter and the Cursed Child I kept thinking of those bad fanfictions where all the old characters keep meeting and bantering about the "old times" and all have children who are of course a portrait of their parents and everybody is friend with each other and all the past arguments are forgotten. This is a natural expression of a fan's desire to keep reading about his/her favorite characters but unfortunately it doesn't create good literature.