Show ended
First seen in 2008 at the Aldeburgh Festival, and subsequently in the West End, New York and Los Angeles, this joyous, feelgood 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 he never conquered in his youth? So it is that, after a lay-off of several decades, Jasper Rees seeks unlikely adventure and redemption via 16 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!’ But Jasper he’s knows damned if he does, and he’s damned if he doesn’t…