Some stories land quietly in your heart and never leave. For me, The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry is one of them and if we have been friends for years you will know how much this story means to me. How often I talk about it, recommend it and generally love it. I am lucky enough to have met the author Rachel Joyce a few times, and to read all of her subsequent work.
I first read about Harold before it was published back in 2012, it’s now a dog-eared proof copy from the publisher, and from those early pages I was completely taken in (you can read that blog post here. Harold’s quiet, unexpected journey — full of pain, memory, hope, and the deep ache of regret — struck a chord I’ve never quite shaken off. So walking into Chichester’s Minerva Theatre to see the new musical adaptation was, for me, like revisiting an old friend I hadn’t seen in years.
This production doesn’t just tell the story — it honours it. From the first gentle notes of the score to the final, breath-holding silence, it held me.
Mark Addy’s Harold is extraordinary — ordinary in the most moving way. He captures the inertia of a man who has lived small and the slow, blooming courage it takes to change. Watching him step into the unknown with nothing but his deck shoes and the weight of his past was just as emotional as reading it for the first time. And Jenna Russell’s Maureen… she broke me. Her stillness, her fury, her moments of quiet grief — it was all there, real and raw.
The music, composed by Passenger, felt like an echo of Harold’s inner world — gently melancholic, sometimes uplifting, and always sincere. Nothing about this show feels manufactured. It has a quiet integrity. The staging is beautifully simple, and because of that, the emotional beats hit even harder. There’s space to feel. And I did — more than once, I found myself with tears slipping down my cheeks, not because anything tragic had happened, but because of the enormous tenderness in the smallest moments. And I wasn’t alone. Whilst at times you could hear a pin drop you could also hear gentle sniffs from all around the theatre.
This is not a flashy production. It doesn’t need to be. It is a quiet, moving meditation on love, grief, forgiveness, and the small choices that shape a life. If you’ve ever lost someone, or lived with something unspoken, or tried — clumsily — to make amends, you’ll see yourself somewhere in Harold’s journey.
For me, seeing this story on stage was like closing a loop — from the first time I read that proof copy and carried Harold around in my head for weeks, to sitting in that dark theatre and watching him take one slow step after another toward healing.
I left the theatre quiet, and full. This is a production that doesn’t shout. It stays with you.