[title]
It may sound like the title of a dodgy porn movie, but make no mistake: you’d find as much sex in Jonathan Guy Lewis and Jasper Rees’s short play as you might in a cup of tea.
In fact, ‘I Found My Horn’ has a few similarities to a nice cuppa: it’s warm, reassuring and puts a spring in your step. Although this one-man show is about a mid-life crisis, in truth, there’s not much angst here. Protagonist Jasper (based on Rees himself, who wrote the original autobiographical novel) hits 40 and finds he’s getting a divorce, his 15-year-old son hates him and that he’s never really achieved anything. While he’s clearing out the basement, he finds a horn. A French horn, to be exact and Jasper embarks on a journey to relearn the instrument he last picked up at school.
The piece is performed with wit and charm by Guy Lewis, who slips easily between the several characters Jasper meets along the way. There’s Jasper’s moody teenage son Dan, his Yorkshire mentor David and his American teachers at ‘horn camp’ (yes, there is such a thing). They’re performed with varying levels of success and some with a little more ridicule than others (one trumpet supremo’s rather violent German accent verges on stereotype), but mostly this voyage of self-discovery is a pleasant homage to music’s redemptive, healing qualities.
The script’s funny moments include the description of the post-traumatic stress Jasper experienced after one fateful attempt to play Mozart’s Third Horn Concerto as a teenager and the horribly uncertain finale. This is a play to make you chuckle and possibly consider dusting off your own childhood musical instrument.