The name gives ‘generic Britcom’ and the show doesn’t entirely fail to deliver on that. But this musical adaptation of Rachel Joyce’s The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry – a 2012 novel that was made into a film a couple of years back – has a fair few unlikely moments of its own, in a good way.
Joyce’s own stage adaptation certainly isn’t a glossy teeth, tits and showtunes affair. Katy Rudd’s production of this yarn about a taciturn man in his sixties having what I think is fair to describe as an elaborate mental breakdown reminded me quite a lot of the charmingly eccentric recent West End hit The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. Both deal with oddball older protagonists from southwest England; both have supernatural elements; both eschew trad orchestration in favour of rustic folk songs, with the tunes here written by indie folkster Passenger.
The story, then, concerns Harold (Mark Addy), a dully affable gent living a life of quiet routine with his pass agg wife Maureen (Jenna Russell). But then he receives a letter from Queenie (Maggie Service), a former colleague of his who he hasn’t seen in 20 years. She is writing to let him know that she is dying of cancer in a hospice in Berwick-upon-Tweed, and she wants to thank him for the kindness he showed her in the past. He composes a hilariously terse letter of condolence and decides to walk down to the post box to send it, but finds that this doesn’t seem adequate and long story short he decides to walk from rural Devon to Berwick, which is up by the Scottish border.
So far so whimsical, but despite some gently amusing encounters with salt-of-the-earth locals, it’s a disarmingly trippy affair. Harold is haunted by a garlanded, Pan-like figure (Noah Mullins, whose character is credited as The Balladeer, and does a lot of the singing); he becomes a cause célèbre as his walk hits social media and the press, attracting a legion of followers who find him inspirational, despite knowing little of what’s going on in his head; his physical and mental condition deteriorates on the road.
As much as anything, it’s a story about life and the scars we pick up on the way. Far from simply being a boring couple who’ve run out of things to say, Harold and Maureen are deeply damaged by a past that is slowly excavated as the story wears on. They’re inarticulate, low key people and the onus is not on them to carry the story with elaborate showstoppers (although Russell gets a couple of piercingly bitter ballads). Rather, they’re its wounded but beating heart, and the craziness that unfolds around Harold is what offers Rudd’s production its sense of spectacle.
It is kind of MOR, and the various revelations along the way do skew towards the predictable. Still, I think male inarticulacy – both inward and out – is a fascinating odd thing to put at the heart of a work of musical theatre. And though a secondary theme, it does a very nice job in dissecting the nature of faith via Harold’s peculiar gaggle of followers, each of whom essentially see themselves reflected in their hero, a man that they don’t understand one bit. It’s a bit cosy, but not entirely so – there’s a wildness and darkness bubbling beneath the surface that means The Unlikely Pilgrimage packs a surprising punch.
