24 Italian Songs and Arias Tickets

“When Brian Lobel was a teenager he failed to get the requisite 98 out of 100 score to get into his state choir. It has haunted him ever since, and he has gone on to have many more failures. Even this show is a failure: it failed to win the Oxford Samuel Beckett Award or get Arts Council funding. But what it does with sly rackety charm is to turn failure into success and in the process explore why we are so uncomfortable with failure, why some people such as businessman Donald Trump fail upwards, and how what might be seen as one person's failure is another person's success. As this show demonstrates, sometimes imperfection is far more interesting than flawless perfection, and often just having a go is a success in itself. I saw it in early 2019 when it was still in embryonic form. By now it should soar.”