The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry musical at Chichester’s Minerva Theatre – review

First a play, then a best-selling book, then a film starring Jim Broadbent and now a musical. The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry continues its onward march.

Rachel Joyce’s story of a man who – on impulse – seeks to solve the problems of his life by setting out on a walk from South Devon to Berwick-upon-Tweed where his friend Queenie is dying tugs quietly on many emotional strings. And with the help of music by Passenger (aka Mike Rosenberg), a stirring production by director Katy Rudd and a series of strongly-sung and deeply felt performances from an exceptional cast led by Mark Addy, this story of the road works surprisingly well in the confined circle of the Minerva.

On Samuel Wyver’s compact set, with a stack of beer barrels paying tribute to Fry’s career in a brewery, a circular frame at the back is full of rough imitation stone that with the help of video projections by Ash J Woodward and Paule Constable’s gorgeous lighting transforms into the landscapes the traveller passes through en route – fields, cathedrals, and finally the sea.

The songs, performed by a small offstage band including harp and guitar and led by music director Chris Poon, and with musical supervision by Phil Bateman, take many forms according to Harold’s encounters. There’s the whimsical folk-infused opening with “Rise Up”, where Jack Wolfe’s balladeer enters like a faerie king, wide-eyed and mythical, and sings an incantation to “a man too scared of living/so he steals away and hides”, and then the uplifting gospel of Walk Upon the Water, where Sharon Rose’s powerhouse of a Garage Girl inspires our hero to get going surrounded by a chorus in shiny blue fringes and sequins.

Later, there’s the terrific “You’re F**ked” from the doctor who heals his tired feet (Madeline Worrall in lively form) and the soaring “Keep on Walking Mr Fry” (also beautifully sung by Worrall, this time as a nun). Later still, Tarinn Callender’s Wilf leads the pilgrims who join Harold’s quest in a rousing hymn to their hero. Best of all are the soul-searching ballads from the incomparable Jenna Russell, full of anger and angst, as Harold’s wife Maureen. “I look like someone left behind”, she says, as she seeks to make sense of a life that has lost its purpose ever since the couple’s son (Wolfe again) vanished from home. Her voice and her ability to chart precise feelings through a song give the show its heft.

The danger with such a disparate range of styles is that the whole does not hold. But Rudd (responsible for The Ocean at the End of the Lane, and Ballet Shoes at the National recently) works her characteristic magic, marking the constant shifts in mood between elation and melancholy, setting (with the help of choreographer Tom Jackson Greaves) the cast off in swirling, involving patterns, carrying branches of catkins for the spring, and waving black plastic to conjure a storm.

The reason the story strikes such a chord is that Fry’s is a life full of mistakes. He wants to see Queenie (a touchingly warm Amy Booth-Steel) because he has let her down so badly in the past; his pilgrimage is a gesture of hope.

The show perhaps packs too much of this revelation into its final 15 minutes, when Addy – whose first musical this is and who carries it with bemused, gentle strength  – has a monologue revealing the entire story.  Nevertheless, it is consistently involving and enjoyable, a paean to the powers of persistence and a symbol of second chances.