Book: Joe Penhall
Music and Lyrics: Ray Davies
Director: Edward Hall
It’s the early 1960s, and four scruffy-looking young men from Muswell Hill are playing as a band called The Ravens, backing the vocals of Robert Wace. Finding the music tedious, and Wace an ineffectual frontman, the boys simply take over and ask Wace to be a co-manager of their band instead of a vocalist.
So begins Sunny Afternoon, which is loosely based on the story of The Kinks using their music as a soundtrack. So also begins one of the main difficulties with the piece.
The challenge with any musical is to create a book that has a good narrative flow, with believable scenes and dialogue, and – something juke-box musicals have their own particular difficulties with – which integrates naturally with the music it is working around. Here, the music does fit the narrative pretty well and seldom feels forced, but notwithstanding that, the way this first scene hangs together just doesn’t feel natural and it’s a problem that occurs at fairly frequent intervals throughout. It’s not helped by the fact that the story is one that pops up regularly – band work their way up to become famous, then some angst threatens to split them up, then they come back together and we all go home humming the songs from the singout at the end of the show. That’s not to say that this is a bad show because it isn’t, and in many ways it has a lot going for it.
There’s a fine cast, led by Danny Horn as Kinks frontman and songwriter Ray Davies. This is an excellent performance by Horn as a perfectionist trying to get on in a world where people are more interested in saving money, struggling to cope with meeting the demands of being in a band on tour against wanting to spend time with his family and looking after his own health. There’s good chemistry too between Horn and Oliver Hoare, who plays Ray’s brother Dave, giving us a good sense of a relationship that is at times extremely fractious. Hoare gives us a sound performance as “Dave the Rave”, the 16-year-old wild child who is confused but unfazed about his sexuality, turning up in a dress yet eagerly disappearing into back rooms with groups of young women. Harry Curley shows a well-judged vulnerability as bassist Pete Quaife, the band member who never really felt like he fitted in, with a good sense of indecision about whether to leave or stay. Rounding up the quartet is Zakarie Stokes as drummer Mick Avory, pleasing the audience with an excellent drum solo to go alongside the rest of his fine performance.
It’s not just about the band, though, and there’s some fine work from the rest of the cast too. Lisa Wright gives an excellent performance as Ray’s wife, Rasa, unimpressed by his fame when they meet and frustrated by his behaviour when the band returns from the United States, after she’s been left behind with a newborn baby to look after on her own. Tam Williams and Joseph Richardson give us an amusing comedy duo as Grenville Collins and Robert Wace, the first co-managers of the band with a nice turn too from Alasdair Craig as Larry Page, another of their managers – in the end they had so many managers, publishers and other representatives, all taking their percentage, that there was hardly any money left, which contributed to the friction.
In the end, it’s the music that is the saving grace of this production, the thread that runs through that manages to keep things interesting. It’s played live onstage not only by the four band members but an ensemble cast of actor-musicians who all contribute to the sound. Ray Davies wrote some of the great iconic songs of their time, and the best-known all make an appearance – You Really Got Me, Waterloo Sunset, All Day and All of the Night, Tired of Waiting for You, all delivered with energy. There’s a beautiful version of Days to enjoy, plus, of course, the sound of the summer of 1966, Sunny Afternoon. It compensates to some extent for a plot that we’ve seen before and which holds few surprises, and scenes and dialogue that too often feel stilted with too much detail – it’s a long show, and some trimming of some of the dialogue wouldn’t go amiss.
It gives us a sense of the backstory of the band and some of their challenges, but it needs the music to make it what it is.
Runs until 25 October 2025 and on tour
The Reviews Hub Star Rating