To promote their Wizard Nights series, the creative minds behind off-Broadway’s Puffs have created posters for their other Puffs parodies.
Puffs, or: Seven Increasingly Eventful Years at a Certain School of Magic and Magic is a play that parodies the Harry Potter books by following three of the Hufflepuffs in Harry’s year: Wayne Hopkins (Zac Moon), Megan Jones (Julie Ann Earls), and Oliver Rivers (Langston Belton). The trio forms a strong friendship, and tries to get a magical education (and not last place in the House Cup) as things at Hogwarts get increasingly chaotic. It currently plays at the Elektra Theatre on weekends.
The playwright, Matt Cox, has written parodies of other Potter properties — Cursed Child and Fantastic Beasts — and the cast of Puffs is doing staged readings of those parodies following certain performances, a free add-on for those who attend the performance in question. Dubbed in these posters as “A Puffs Tale,” these additional parodies have been ensuring that most of Puffs’ Wizard Nights have been selling out.
The Cursed Child parody, Nineteen Years Later Or; There And Back Again: A Puffs Tale Parts 1 & 3, concerns the son of two of the Puffs, and how he gets embroiled in the mess of a Potter kid at school just like his parents did. It both services the beloved Puffs characters, and introduces Puffs versions of Next Gen characters like Scorpius and Craig. Since the source material is so ripe for parody, Nineteen Years Later goes over like gangbusters with audiences. There is one performance left on February 3.
The poster dispenses with mysteries about the identity of the Cursed Child — since the entire Puff family is in the center, we take it to mean all of them are cursed with the bad luck of being adjacent to Potters’ adventures.
The Fantastic Beasts parody has a rather lengthy title: Dude, Where’s My Fantastic Beast? Or; 30 Short Films About Magical New York In 1926 When a Puff Came for a Quick Visit and the Disaster that Followed Film 1 of 5. It’s clear the poster designers had fun, because there are a lot of elements for eagle-eyed fans to spot. The evil-looking tornado is meant to be Credence, we’re guessing.
Dude, Where’s My Fantastic Beast? is a rather different animal from the other Puffs parodies because its source material already features a Hufflepuff protagonist. So the parody hews closer to an actual retelling of Fantastic Beasts with a Puffs twist on it, as opposed to crafting a brand-new story. Fortunately, this means audiences will get to see gems like the Erumpent mating dance, the goblin jazz singer, and signature lines like, “Will we die, just a little?”
Dude, Where’s My Fantastic Beast? also finds time to skewer Rowling’s “History of Magic in North America,” giving voice to many of the issues fans have had with the Pottermore pieces. It turns out there’s a perfectly ridiculous explanation for it, featuring a silly new side character who begs to be explored further! There is one performance left, on January 27.
In general, the expansion of the Puffs universe is incredibly exciting. Much like the MCU, it’s all connected, and even has a supporting character who pops up everywhere like Phil Coulson! Just as the A Very Potter trilogy was compelling enough for additional stories in that universe (like the impending recording of A Very Potter X-Mas), the mythology of Puffs has us hoping for more and more Puffs Tales in the future.
If you want to buy tickets to see these parodies, go to Puffs the Play’s website. This writer will be there both nights!
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