The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry review, Theatre Royal Haymarket – Folkie feelgood musical transcends its own tweeness

Rachel Joyce’s hit feelgood novel The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry certainly doesn’t have the most original plot on the shelves. It follows an ordinary, freshly retired man who breaks free of his stifling life and strained marriage in rural Devon, finding meaning and connection on a long journey away from everything he knows. Harold Fry is the sort of venturesome protagonist you might expect to find in a particular brand of dewy-eyed bestseller – books such as Eat, Pray, Love, or the now-notorious The Salt Path. Still, if the story is familiar, the stage show it’s inspired really does feel like a rare thing: a new British musical with an engrossing, new(ish) story that’s powered by genuinely catchy songs, written by Passenger (known for folky 2012 hit “Let Her Go”). And when the second half takes an abrupt plunge into darkness, it’s a reminder that this man isn’t just off on holiday – he’s going on a pilgrimage to escape a very secular, personal kind of hell.

This show’s structure is initially pretty simple, like a fur-free version of Lloyd Webber’s much-maligned Cats. Harold Fry (Mark Addy) meets quirky characters along his journey, and they introduce themselves through the medium of songs – sometimes loosely stereotypical, sometimes brightly original – before melting into a dancing herd of chorus members. First up is a petrol station attendant (Nicole Nyarambi) who inspires his big mission with the familiar-feeling gospel-tinged number “Walk Upon The Water”. Harold is clutching a letter he intends to post to Queenie, who’s on her deathbed in a hospice on the other side of the country; by the end of the song, he decides to walk there instead, tearing his boat shoes to shreds over the course of his spontaneous 87-day-long trek that somehow, magically, seems to be keeping his old friend alive.

Passenger’s songs are a perfect match for this story: they’ve got that distinctly rousing, footstomping, almost spiritual energy of the 2010s British folk revival’s biggest hits. And if the lyrics sometimes have an overly earnest quality, the delightfully nuts way that they’re staged ensures that each song has a distinct texture of its own. Rudd’s direction, Samuel Wyer’s design, and Tom Jackson Greaves’s choreography don’t waste a minute, packing every number with eccentric flourishes. The chorus become pole-walking exercise nuts waddling through the countryside like Indian runner ducks, or car wash rollers decked in plastic fringing, or sheep diffidently baa-ing in shaggy fur gilets. It’s twee – but no more than you’d expect from this show’s unashamedly feelgood premise.

And when pathos and calm is needed, we get it by the spadeload. Jenna Russell lends so much repressed depth to the part of Harold’s wife Maureen, pouring out her loneliness in “Tin of Soup For One” – “I used to cook exotic foods/ I used to feel erotic moods,” she sings, in a welcome outbreak of lyrical humour from Passenger. Gradually, skilfully, Joyce’s adaptation of her own book shows us what went wrong. The Frys’ lost son David is evoked by “The Balladeer”, a Pan-like figure who wears a crown of leaves and hymns the multi-sensory wonders of the dawning spring in “Song for the Countryside”. Noah Mullins’ voice soars in the role, giving it a horrible poignancy. Soon, we see his less euphoric side.

There’s something sharply, painfully sad about the second act’s excavation of grief and loss, which lends a much-needed acidity to the musical comfort food that’s gone before. But it only goes so deep. Harold is never really forced to confront his own failings, not really. Still, this isn’t a story about his downfall. It’s a tale of painfully rebuilding and recovering lost happiness. And ultimately, it does what it sets out to do. It takes you on a journey that sends you home feeling a bit lighter, a bit more hopeful, than you did before.

‘The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry’ is on at Theatre Royal Haymarket, London, until 18 April