Dom😍😍😍 (Dominic Short, London cast 4) best Albus ever, I love his interpretation so so much!

He’s this ball of nervous energy almost all of the time but it shifts and changes so cleverly depending on which characters he’s interacting with, he relaxes around Scorpius and also Ginny but he completely tenses up with Harry and masks his anxiety a lot when he’s talking to Rose. He’s got the dry sarcastic approach nailed (which means the line all dry humour and Albus-y works really well) but balances it perfectly with Albus’ inner desire to love and be loved. I always say that Dom’s Albus is best described as :D and then sometimes D: he’s very expressive and gets the ‘grumpy angsty teen’ outer whilst also capturing all of Albus’ soft heart. His blanket scene is heartbreaking, he tries so so hard to keep his cool for so long despite the visible anxiety it’s causing him (which Harry isn’t picking up on) and then when he breaks he really breaks and you’re left in no doubt he didn’t want to get into an argument with his dad but well if he’s going to may as well bring out the big guns! And then the quiet acceptance when Harry takes the bait and says that line :( when he grips onto Scorpius to hug him later on the train it’s with such a need (I feel like it’s possible that he wouldn’t even let ginny hug him on the platform, he just hurried himself onto the train completely wrapped up in his sleep deprived mad Cedric plan and as soon as he saw his best friend realised he needed some comfort)

In staircase ballet, he barely looks up, he’s so miserable but it also seems to me like he’s determined not to see Scorpius because it’s too painful to acknowledge (Albus is the kind of person who turns inward when he’s upset) so when they meet at the top of the stairs, the first thing he sees is Scorpius’ feet and you can see instant recognition on his face. That’s his best friend and he’d recognise something as mundane as his ankles and school shoes, he spots that it’s Scorpius and it’s like he can’t resist looking up and meeting his eye but he knows it’s going to bring him so much pain to see the hurt in Scorpius’ expression, you can see the journey of that moment to when Scorpius dramatically arrives in the library. Albus ‘Scorpius, I can’t’ is more than ‘I’m not allowed my dad said no’, it’s that he can’t bear to face how much he’s hurting his best friend. But then as Scorpius starts to read him the riot act and for the first ever time use his words to hurt, Albus starts off defensive and then you see him stop and his whole body stills as he starts to accept it, he’s ashamed of himself and really is trying to show Scorpius that he’s listening (I always think the dialogue doesn’t give enough for their reconciliation here after Scorpius’ speech and I like that Dom plays it so that his body language is telling that missing part of the story)

He’s stiff and uncomfortable and not ready for the conversation when Harry comes to his dorm but then so relaxed and sweet when it’s just him and Scorpius and he can be honest (why was I so determined to do this? Cedric, really?) that scene is my favourite! They’re both such nerds, Albus is all excited about Polly Chapman fancying Scorpius and to hear what happened with Rose, there’s just so much obvious love between his Albus and particularly Jon’s Scorpius but he does it with Gordon and Luke too! And then in the final scene he’s still doing the ‘Harry energy’ way of being that we’ve seen but you can tell he’s really trying to push past it and get through to his dad. He does this thing where he holds the fingers of one hand in the other as like a nervous tic and it’s most pronounced in this scene because he’s pushing past his anxiety to talk to his dad

And he adds so many fun little touches, like after the line ‘sparkly surprise’ he demonstrates a firework display over his head with sound effects, it’s so dorky and adorable, and when he’s hiding from bathilda in Godric’s hollow he puts his hood up and hilariously tries to blend in with the wall, one time he fully crouched like a little woodland creature. When Scorpius says ‘I’ve lost the time turner’ in front of the adults, his over dramatic ‘haha you’ve lost WHAT?’ is so obvious but he thinks he’s being sly, in fact Albus always looks at Scorpius with a ‘my best friend is such a dork I love him’ way (not even saying this to mean scorbus ha just the love the two characters have for each other in any sense)

This is getting long but one last mention to my favourite moment and that is the meaningful pause he leaves before the ‘no offence but I’d choose someone massive and really good at magic’ line, it’s so heavy with unspoken words and Scorpius is expectantly hoping he’ll say it back, and in the pause you can hear that Albus really feels it back and he would say it but he’s Albus and he has to deflect with his dry humour so he pulls out that line instead, his sweet vulnerability is never more apparent and I love that a moment which can be played for laughs at Scorpius comes across so tenderly and much more them than the dialogue alone suggests (and he does it again later when Scorpius says he ‘undoubtedly will’ be the first to get a girlfriend, he’s like ‘oh🥺’ until Scorpius breaks the moment with his own joke this time)