Review of Puffs (A Galloway Production)

This year Galloway’s Arts Department decided that the school play was going to be Puffs, a Harry Potter-inspired story. Puffs follows the journey of misfit students navigating their years at Hogwarts from the perspective of one of the most overlooked houses, Hufflepuff. As the story begins, we see familiar characters from the books and movies like Cedric Diggory and Nymphadora Tonks. Through humor and heart, this play tells how heroism can come even in unlikely places. 

Or at least that's what Galloway tried to make this play. 

The biggest issue with the play was the length. The play was far too long with a two-hour run time and no intermission. Although this play had seven whole books of information and stories to draw from, trying to rush through all of them in just two hours made it incredibly monotonous. A junior at Galloway, Luke Sommerville, shared his opinion: “It got dragged on for way too long, which left everyone bored and out of tune.” 

There was a clear moment in the play where it switched from being funny and enjoyable to a slew of information thrown at you, and the story disappeared. This left me, and what I'm assuming to be the majority of the crowd, excited to leave the theater. This is incredibly unfortunate because a lot of hard work was put into this show. Puffs perfectly illustrates why a strong story is essential in creating captivating entertainment. Without it, even the most clever concept can fall flat.

It wasn't all bad though. The improvisation and humor they used throughout the play made it much more enjoyable to watch. One cast member to highlight is Jacob Sherman, who had one of his roles as “Zach Smith.” His incredible line delivery and raunchy jokes made the crowd laugh and want more. One especially commendable scene was when he played the role of the quidditch coach, which I can confidently say was my favorite part of the entire show.  This gave the audience a much-needed connection to the show and had me on the edge of my seat whenever he came on the stage. 

From the perspective of a senior at Galloway, the humor added to the play and made it hilarious; however, this was different for some of the younger audience members watching the play. Most of the humor used in the play has a sexual innuendo behind it, and it can get a bit graphic and extreme at times. Katie Byrd, a freshman at Galloway, gave her opinion on this: “I think that they shouldn’t have put the recommended age from nine to twelve [because] there was a lot of fake kissing and a lot of sexual jokes and references that would not be suitable for 9-year-olds.” While this is a rather small complaint, it feels important to mention because a school play’s target audience is typically younger audiences, and with this play, it is not appropriate for them. 

While there was a lot of disappointing acting and storytelling in this play one thing stood out, the set. The set for Puffs was quite impressive with a magical backdrop that made you feel like you were walking through the halls of Hogwarts. 

This play was not a good representation of the successful and polished production that Galloway Theatre usually has. Although Puffs did not meet my expectations for a Galloway production, it was clear that the cast and stage crew still put in a lot of effort and that is to be commended.

By Gavin Morrissey