The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry — a pitch-perfect musical version

★★★★★In 2012 Rachel Joyce achieved unexpected literary success with her miraculously ordinary, defiantly down-to-earth novel about a man who goes out to post a letter and ends up walking the length of England. This humane, wryly funny musical is the latest art form to celebrate the fictional Harold Fry — a retired man who measures out his life in lawnmowing sessions until a message from a dying former colleague inspires an odyssey from Devon to Berwick.
Mark Addy plays Harold just two years after a film of the book, starring Jim Broadbent and Penelope Wilton, opened to mixed reviews. Why risk a musical then, sceptics might ask. Yet this assured, pitch-perfect production — with a ravishing indie-folk score by Passenger — quickly dispels any

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