I FOUND MY HORN

Fifteen years after its first production, and following a recent sell-out run at the White Bear in Kennington, I Found My Horn – starring Jonathan Guy Lewis – will transfer to the Riverside Studios this summer, playing in Studio 3 at the Hammersmith venue from 30 May – 11 June, with a press night on Weds 31 May. Written by Jonathan Guy Lewis and Jasper Rees, adapted from Rees’s best-selling book, and directed by Harry Burton, I Found My Horn was first performed in 2008 at the Aldeburgh Fringe Festival. Subsequently seen in the West End, Chichester and Hampstead, as well as at one-off performances in New York, Los Angeles and at Laguna Beach Playhouse, this joyous, feel-good show places the transforming power of music centre-stage.

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 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 balls of Sheffield steel to play the French horn in public!”

Damned if he does, Jasper also knows he’s damned if he doesn’t…

Jasper Rees said, “I could not be more thrilled that the stage version of I Found My Horn is being revived. The three of us who made this play – Jonathan as actor-writer, Harry as director, and me – are all longer in the tooth than when we started out together. So, for us the theme of seizing the day as the sands of time run low now resonates on a deeper level. We hope it hits the sweet spot with audiences at the Riverside.”