I FOUND MY HORN
By Jonathan Guy Lewis and Jasper Rees
A man wakes up in midlife to a broken marriage and the dawning fear that he has done nothing to make himself memorable.
Packing away his life as he prepares for divorce, he is struck by an insane idea: why not pick up the French horn that defeated him in his youth?
So it is that, after a lay-off of several decades, Jasper Rees seeks adventure and redemption via sixteen feet of treacherous brass tubing. Dusting off the instrument he last played as a gormless teen, he sets himself an impossible task: to perform a Mozart concerto in front of a paying audience of horn fanatics.
“Don’t do it,” says his mentor. “It takes bollocks of Sheffield steel to play the French horn in public!”
Damned if he does, Jasper also knows he’s damned if he doesn’t…
Adapted from the bestselling book by Jasper Rees, and directed by Harry Burton, I Found My Horn was premiered in 2008 at the Aldeburgh Festival. Subsequently seen at Chichester Festival Theatre, the Orange Tree in Richmond, Hampstead Theatre, Trafalgar Studios in the West End, the Riverside Studios in Hammersmith and most recently at the Ustinov at Theatre Royal Bath, this joyous, feel-good show places the transformative power of music centre-stage.
Performer: Jonathan Guy Lewis
Director: Harry Burton
Running time: 90 minutes no interval
Telegraph
★★★★
‘a shot of pure joy... delightful, often laugh-out-loud funny’
The Guardian
★★★★
‘delightful… wryly funny, infinitely touching account of the joys and hazards of making music and confronting one's private demons’
Sunday Times
★★★★
‘funny, serious and moving… a gem’
The Team
Jonathan Guy Lewis is an actor, writer, director, teacher, mentor, and coach. Recent theatre includes Eddie Carbone in A View from The Bridge for The Touring Consortium, directed by Steve Unwin, and Dr John Hall in Peter Whelan’s The Herbal Bed, directed by James Dacre. Familiar to TV audiences from Soldier Soldier, London’s Burning and Coronation Street, he is also the author of the military-themed plays Our Boys and Soldier On, and a trilogy about the state of the nation’s education including A Level Playing Field and The Be All & End All. He is artistic director of the Soldiers’ Arts Academy.
Jasper Rees has written regularly for many newspapers and magazines, principally about arts, books and entertainment. His books include I Found My Horn: One Man’s Struggle with the Orchestra’s Most Difficult Instrument (published as A Devil to Play in the US) and Bred of Heaven: One Man’s Quest to Reclaim His Welsh Roots. Both were abridged as a Book of the Week on BBC Radio 4. More recently he wrote Let’s Do It: The Authorised Biography of Victoria Wood, and edited Victoria Wood Unseen on TV. He is also the biographer of Arsène Wenger and Florence Foster Jenkins. The stage version of I Found My Horn, co-adapted with Jonathan Guy Lewis, is his only play.
Harry Burton Credits include: The Lover (Bridewell), The Room (Royal Court) & The Dumb Waiter (West End); Quartermaine's Terms (Windsor); I Found My Horn (Chichester, Hampstead & West End); Where I Come From (Kentucky Rep); The Leisure Society (Trafalgar Studios); What The Butler Saw (Vaudeville); Casualties (Park Theatre); Barking In Essex (Wyndham’s); God Of Carnage (Copenhagen); Parzival (Sharpham House); Positive (Park Theatre); Blue On Blue (Tristan Bates); Madame Butterfly (Cadogan Hall); Spring & The Last Dance (Frontier Theatre); Out There On Fried Meat Ridge Road (White Bear/Trafalgar Studios); Art, Truth & Politics (with Mark Rylance, Harold Pinter Theatre); The Dogwalker (Jermyn Street); Harold Pinter’s The Dwarfs (White Bear). Ashes To Ashes (by Harold Pinter, with Dame Harriet Walter, BBC Radio). Working With Pinter (Channel 4); Thinspiration (Channel 4)