Review: LOUIS HORNE: Secret Jazz Diaries at The Water Rats 21 August / Camden Fringe

‘Louis Horne is a character to get to know, whether it’s his unsettling humour or his jazz trumpeting par excellence, it’s a great way to spend an evening.’ ★★★★

The wonderful world of Louis Horne includes a podcast, an adult cartoon and a film. Now he’s going live with a near the knuckle show which also features jazz trumpet extraordinaire.  Louis Horne is the alter ego of award-winning Welsh trumpeter and actor Andy Davies.  The show is created by Davies and Nathan Britton who is his side-kick on keys.

The show mentions Louis Horne’s early years, winning “Is Wales Talented?” in 1994, leading to a life of money, fame and excess with drink, drugs and scandal taking its toll on the 12-year-old. Now he’s a washed-up, washed-out and weighty 33-year-old.  It’s an act to make your toes curl, covering many laughter inducing subjects such as sexual health dysfunction in males and child stardom.

Those of you who are very familiar with the works of Shakespeare would probably agree with me that puns aren’t very funny, but Louis Horne has a clever repertoire of wordplay which is central to his act, as even his name will attest. The stories often end in a home-made song accompanied by the horn. A favourite being ‘Don’t kiss a miner’ (or is it ‘minor’). The lyrics are plenty easy enough for the audience to sing-along and clap-along.  Hackneyed themes are chosen for their comic potential, such as the panpipes and a song about climate-change warrior Greta Thunberg.  In some ways it’s a show about the superficiality of celebrity and enslavement to its lure.

Personally, I would have preferred more of a through line, either with a cohesive story or a return to a running theme, instead of a volley of pastiches.   There’s no shortage of material here for actor Davies to plunder. Davies stays wonderfully in character, but I would like to have seen underneath to a little more of the hard-hitting vulnerability, to some heart-breaking truth. I would also like to have had more of the excellent jazz trumpet, for example ‘Walking in the Air’ (from The Snowman, which brought Welsh singer Aled Jones to fame). It’s been aired so many times that it’s become cliché but who has heard it played by Davies on the horn? It’s a whole new experience and quite beautiful to hear, sadly cut short in a ‘jazz solo’ (with a no longer recognisable tune).

Okay, I get it, the whole point is that Louis Horne’s early successes have now rounded out into his later failure, but couldn’t he still win once or twice? In this way, the audience would get more of the highs. All taken into consideration, the world of Louis Horne is endlessly fascinating, a character to get to know better, with his sense of humour which is often a bit cringe worthy but never bitter. Plus, he has a trump card which is something to trumpet about, and it’s a great sound in the marvellous world of Louis Horne.

LOUIS HORNE: Secret Jazz Diaries by Andy Davies and Nathan Britton

The Water Rats 21 August / Camden Fringe

Produced by Soho Live Studios

https://www.soho.live/secretjazzdiaries

Twitter: @andydaviesjazz

Reviewed by Heather Jeffery, Editor of London Pub Theatres Magazine