Evanston native and veteran Chicago actor Matt Mueller plays Ron Weasley (a role he played on Broadway for a year) in the national tour of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, which begins in Chicago next month.
Courtesy of Matthew Murphy for MurphyMade
Theater veteran Matt Mueller saw many plays as a child. And he has his parents – actors Roger Mueller and Jill Shellabarger – to thank for that.
“That’s what we did,” said the Evanston native, whose parents are deeply rooted in the Chicago theater scene. “Either my dad or my mom acted in shows.”
Acting was and is the Mueller family business. And although his parents never pressured Matt, his twin sister Abby, his younger sister Jessie, or his younger brother Andrew to follow in their footsteps, they all did.
“We found our way into acting at different times and in different ways,” said Mueller, who, like his siblings, regularly performs on stages in Chicago and the suburbs.
He returns home to play the role of adult Ron Weasley (which he played on Broadway) in Harry Potter and the Cursed Child. The national tour of the play begins next month at the James M. Nederlander Theatre in Chicago and runs through January.
Mueller’s original one-year contract with the Broadway production ended in March 2020, around the time the COVID-19 pandemic closed theaters.
When the theater reopened in 2021 after more than a year, he co-starred on Broadway in Chicago’s extended run of the farce “The Play That Goes Wrong.” That was followed by the Writers Theater’s exquisite revival of “Once” in 2023. When producers invited him to join the “Cursed Child” tour, he was “over the moon” to perform the play again.
“It was really nice when ‘Harry Potter and the Cursed Child’ came back into my life,” Mueller said. “It was a privilege to do it in New York… I’m grateful it happened again.”
Preparing for the tour has been “an exciting and moving experience,” he said of the production, which reunites most of the original creative team.
“I love this character. I love this story,” said Mueller, who has read all seven books in JK Rowling’s “Harry Potter” series. “I’m excited to be a part of it again.”
The play (said to be the most successful non-musical play in Broadway history) is set 19 years after Harry, Ron and Hermione save the wizarding world. It begins with Harry and Ginny’s son Albus and Ron and Hermione’s daughter Rose heading off to Hogwarts, where Albus befriends Scorpius Malfoy, the son of Harry’s arch-enemy Draco Malfoy.
When Mueller was on the show, “Cursed Child” consisted of two parts and four acts that lasted more than five hours. The current version is shorter.
After starring as the adult Ron Weasley in the Broadway production of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, Matt Mueller, a veteran of Drury Lane, Marriott, Northlight, Writers and Chicago Shakespeare, is “overjoyed” to reprise the role for the national tour.
“I’m excited for Chicago to experience this story,” he said. “I loved the two-part version. It was a wonderful experience, but I think this is also a brilliant way to tell the story.”
Screenwriter Jack Thorne, director John Tiffany and the rest of the creative team “did an amazing job of getting to the heart of the story and really getting to the core, to the essence of what it’s about.”
“It really feels like we’re working on a new play,” Mueller said, adding that the “incredible magic” of the production still takes his breath away.
But the piece is not just about special effects and illusions. It is a story about family and the meaning of love.
He even expects that the audience will leave the theater with hugs to their loved ones.
“It’s a very emotional story,” he said. “It’s beautiful.”
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“Harry Potter and the Cursed Child”
When: 10 September to 1 February 2025
Where: James M. Nederlander Theater, 24 W. Randolph St., Chicago
Tickets: $49-$193 at broadwayinchicago.com
