The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry is already a contender for my favourite musical of 2026. This folk musical, adapted by Rachel Joyce from her 2012 novel with songs by Passenger, arrives in the West End after selling out Chichester last summer, carrying with it hugely likeable characters and a willingness to find grace in the ordinary.
Harold Fry is a grey-haired, soft-spoken retiree living in Devon with his wife Maureen, their marriage calcified by years of silence. When a letter arrives from Queenie Hennessy, a former colleague now dying in a Berwick-upon-Tweed hospice, Harold sets out to post a reply. He walks past the postbox. Then another. Then the post office. Instead of mailing it, he keeps walking, convinced that if he keeps moving, Queenie will stay alive. Over 500 miles of English countryside, Harold meets strangers who share their stories and he shares his: the guilt he carries, and the marriage he abandoned. Back home, Maureen unpacks her own grief and anger, tracing the brittle outline of what they once had. By the interval, Harold has become an accidental celebrity, social media pilgrims trailing behind him, and the show has revealed the tragedy that hollowed out his life.
Mark Addy gives Harold the right mix of gentleness and stubbornness, and it was wonderful to see Robert Baratheon from Game of Thrones in the flesh bringing such warmth to a completely different kind of character. He plays Harold as someone who listens more than he speaks, absorbing the garage attendant’s encouragement and the farmer’s wife’s loneliness without judgment. When Harold collapses in a storm and starts hallucinating, Addy’s slumped shoulders and shaking voice make the breakdown physical. He doesn’t sing much, which feels deliberate: this is a man uncomfortable being the centre of anything. Jenna Russell, meanwhile, injects Maureen with a brittleness that softens as the show progresses. When she sings Such a Simple Thing, recalling the early days of their romance, she makes you believe the love was real before it went wrong. Her exchange with neighbour Rex over FaceTime is played for laughs, but Russell keeps Maureen’s frustration sharp underneath.
Noah Mullins plays The Balladeer, a Celtic-inflected narrator who drifts in and out of scenes. It’s an ethereal role that Mullins handles with a delicate voice and unsettling intensity. His relationship to Harold remains unclear until a reveal late in the second act that adds emotional weight but strains credibility. The ensemble multi-role efficiently. Nicole Nyarambi brings genuine warmth as the Garage Girl who sparks Harold’s journey, and Timo Tatzber’s puppet dog earns affectionate laughs without tipping into sentiment. Maggie Service haunts the edges as Queenie in flashback, though the play keeps her offstage for too long.
Passenger’s score, steeped in indie-folk melancholy, delivers haunting, emotionally resonant ballads that suit the material without ever feeling showy. Walk Upon the Water has an anthemic build that lands cleanly, and Keep On Walking Mr Fry drives the end of Act One with jaunty momentum. You’re F**ked, a profanity-laden litany of modern woes, gets laughs but feels imported from a different show. Paule Constable’s lighting shifts subtly from Devon’s soft greens to the harsher tones of the North, and a storm sequence midway through the second act uses shadows and projections to good effect.
There’s something moving about watching an ordinary man decide it’s not too late to make amends, even if the journey takes longer than it should. This is a musical about people who carry grief quietly and find grace in unexpected places, a reminder that sometimes the smallest steps forward matter most. It may test your patience, but it earns its tears by the end.
