Breaking Baz: How ‘The Full Monty’ Alum Mark Addy Is Poised To Become The West End’s Unlikeliest Musical Star In ‘The Unlikely Pilgrimage Of Harold Fry’

EXCLUSIVE: Mark Addy (The Full Monty, Game of Thrones) says that starring in a new musical was not something he’d ever imagined doing — that is, until he was sent The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry.

“I read it and fell in love with the story,” says Addy of the show based on Rachel Joyce’s adaptation of her best-selling 2012 novel about Harold Fry, a 60-year-old retiree who leaves his house one day to post a letter to a dying friend, telling his wife Maureen, that he won’t be long.

He has no inkling that he’s about to embark on a 600-mile trek from one end of the country to the other, interacting with the strangers he meets along the way. “Harold just knows that he has to keep on walking,” Addy tells Deadline following a full rehearsal in the basement of a Bloomsbury hotel of The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fryfeaturing music and lyrics ranging from English pastoral to a raise-the-roof ballad by platinum-selling, singer-songwriter Passenger, though his real name Mike Rosenberg is used when we’re introduced.

It’s the penultimate runthrough in the subterranean space ahead of its first preview Thursday night at the Theatre Royal Haymarket.

The last musical Addy appeared in was a 1990 production of The Fantasticks in Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre. “It was a non-singing part and this is my first time in a proper musical role. … And with these singers and dancers,” he says, gesturing to fellow castmates, “there’s a bit of an imposter syndrome going on.”

Addy’s so composed when we chat. Ten minutes before, he’d been performing the final scene with Jenna Russell (Sunday in the Park With George, Into the Woods), an acclaimed actress equally comfortable in musical or dramatic productions on stage or the telly, as Maureen. Addy appeared to have been crying as he played the scene.

“They’re real tears,” observes Chris Harper, the award-winning producer who began putting the production together more than seven years ago with Nick Sidi, a producer and the musical’s dramaturg.

“Mark just buries himself into the role, and sometimes it’s impossible to hold back emotion. He sobs every time,” adds Harper, who produced The Roommate on Broadway with Mia Farrow and Patti LuPone. Other shows include Death of a Salesman, Company and Angels in America with director Marianne Elliott through their now-disbanded Elliott & Harper Productions.

The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry had its world premiere at the Chichester Festival Theatre in West Sussex last May and June, following a string of workshops orchestrated over the years by director Katy Rudd. Her production of The Ballet Shoesbased on Noel Streatfeild’s beloved 1936 novel, is on at the National Theatre, where it returned for its second winter season.

During The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry’s sold-out run in Chichester, it became increasingly evident that the story resonated deeply with audiences there, and Harper and his collaborators felt emboldened to transfer it into the West End.

Except, theater availability in London’s theaterland is rarer than hen’s teeth. However, they were able to secure the Haymarket for a limited 11-week season through April 18.

The story began originally as a BBC Radio 4 play two decades ago. It was a three-hander with Anton Rodgers (May to December, Dirty Rotten Scoundrels movie) and Anna Massey (Peeping Tom, Frenzy), who both since have died, playing Harold and Maureen with Niamh Cusack (Suspect: The Shooting of Jean Charles de Menzezes) performing a multitude of other roles. “It was something that I wrote because my dad was dying, so it was the sort of thing that I wrote for my dad,” Joyce reveals.

She had penned it with Rodgers in mind “because at the time he was so good, as Mark is, at just being hilarious and heartbreaking at the same moment.”

Back then, the play was billed as To Be a Pilgrim, and I remember hearing its first broadcast.

Subsequently, Joyce adapted the drama into a novel that was long-listed for a Booker Prize. The tome then was readapted into a feature starring Jim Broadbent and Penelope Wilton. Both the book and the picture passed me by.

And with the title change, I hadn’t realized that the radio play was related to The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry until 10 minutes into the show. I’m not giving away too much plot. To use Joyce’s words, the show’s both hilarious and heartbreaking, but the heartbreaking bit catches you unawares.

Joyce says that, after the book was published, she had “this idea” that because the story “is so theatrical it could be a show.”

Her sister, the actress Emily Joyce, suggested that she seek out Harper, advice she actioned by sending him her book, followed by afternoon tea at Soho House. There was mention of “this brilliant director who had this massive imagination,” says Joyce in reference to Rudd, who, by the way, also happens to be working with Working Title and Emma Thompson on a musical stage version of the Nanny McPhee movie.

Rosenberg, aka Passenger, was approached about the score, which the composer calls the “best” and the “hardest” composition that he’s worked on. It’s a different discipline composing for the theater, he explains.

Similarly, it took Joyce some time before she was able to wrestle an initial draft that had a six-hour running time into a perfectly crafted book for the stage. “I overwrote, basically. Then gradually I was told to take things away, bit by bit,” she says with a chuckle.

“You begin to realize what the theater needs and what it doesn’t,” the novelist adds.

Vital in structuring The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry with Rudd and Joyce was Peter Darling, the visionary choreographer and movement director who put his stamp on an array of musicals that include Billy Elliot, Matilda, Our House and Groundhog Day and plays such as Michael Grandage’s thrilling production of Edward II with Joseph Fiennes in the titular role, and a 2000 revival of Merrily We Roll Along starring Daniel Evans, Julian Ovenden and Samantha Spiro at the Donmar.

Darling’s an artist of the first rank to have in your corner when developing a musical. I covered weeks of rehearsal for Billy Elliot, and my fondest memories are of observing Darling and director Stephen Daldry ripping up a scene and creating it anew with me sitting totally rapt.

The trio of Rudd, Joyce and Darling spent countless hours over Zoom during the pandemic discussing how to bring the tale to life.

Rudd says the conversations concerned  “What does this song feel like?“ and “should this feel like an MGM number or should this one feel like a folk song?”

After workshops and Chichester, those questions are answered, and now the production’s ready for the West End.

The cast is led by Addy, Russell and Noah Mullins, superb as The Balladeer who charts a way for us, and more.

Here’s the exceptional company: Craig Armstrong, Jenna Boyd, Daniel Crossley, Nell Martin, Nicole Nyarambi, Peter Polycarpou, Gleanne Purcell-Brown, Ashley Samuels, Maggie Service, Madeleine Worrall and Timo Tatzber with Gemma Atkins, Olivia Foster -Browne, Ediz Mahmut and Edwin Ray.

Musical director Chris Poon must’ve been working on this when I interviewed him during lockdown about another production. Good that we’re seeing cultural benefits emerging from the pandemic.

During one poignant moment in The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold FryI looked at both Addy and Russell and wondered how they made their performances seem so effortless. How did they become Harold and Maureen?

The stage is in their bones, and I’ve been privileged to have seen them break a leg on countless occasions over the years. I don’t want to oversell the show. Easily, I could call it the best new musical of the year, except that it’s bloody January, so I won’t do that.

Walk 600 miles to see it? Yeah, but in this weather?

Let’s settle for: Sprint, don’t walk, to see The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry starring an unbelievably moving Mark Addy.