Theatre review: The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry

The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry seemed like one of those shows I have an extreme reaction to: The sort of heartstring-tugging story that'll either have me sobbing uncontrollably or cringing halfway out of my skin. Neither really ended up happening in the end - certainly in the first half-hour I found it pretty unbearable, but Rachel Joyce (book) and Passenger's (music and lyrics) adaptation of Joyce's novel does end up more or less bearable. Recently-retired Harold (Transphobia Ltd Employee Mark Addy) lives a joyless life in Devon with funsponge wife Maureen (Jenna Russell,) until one morning he receives a letter informing him that old friend Queenie (Maggie Service) is in a hospice with terminal cancer. He writes a perfunctory response but when he tries to post it finds himself constantly putting it off and walking to the next postbox.

Theatre review: The Ocean at the End of the Lane

The National usually puts a family show on one of its larger stages around Christmas but this year's offering winds up in the Dorfman; perhaps because, although it has its share of spectacle in Fly Davis and Samuel Wyer's design and Jamie Harrison's illusions, Katy Rudd's production relies heavily on old-fashioned theatricality and the work of its ensemble to bring its magic to life. Joel Horwood adapts Neil Gaiman's The Ocean at the End of the Lane, in which the favourite Gaiman trope of the witchy Maiden, Mother and Crone guard the borders between realities. Samuel Blenkin is the unnamed Boy who, in 1983, a year after losing his mother, has another encounter with death on his 12th birthday when he finds the body of his family's lodger. The man has killed himself after gambling away other people's money, and the traumatic event close to a place where the boundaries between realities are weak wakes something on the other side.