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Evening Standard
Evening Standard
Entertainment
Nick Curtis

The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry: Call it a meh-sical

Mark Addy Jenna Russell Rachel Joyce Tristram Kenton Queenie
Mark Addy (Harold Fry) Noah Mullins (the Balladeer) Jenna Russell (Maureen Fry) - (©Tristram Kenton)

This low-key musical about a symbolic journey by foot has a lot going for it. It’s adapted by Rachel Joyce from her best-selling, Booker-nominated 2012 novel. It has two of the most innately, warmly likeable lead actors in Mark Addy and Jenna Russell as the questing Harold and his exasperated wife Maureen.

Director Katy Rudd conjures episodes from our hero’s journey along the length of England with simple props, a beautiful backdrop of looming skies and the collusion of an agile ensemble and a puppet dog. The folk-inflected score by Passenger is witty and tuneful. Yet for all its obvious charms and consummate professionalism it remains curiously uninvolving and slight. Call it a meh-sical.

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