Nothing tames the anarchy of rock and roll yore more than its retelling through a taut musical spoilt by bronzed Oliviers.
Joe Penhall’s Sunny Afternoon, an award-winning musical biopic of The Kinks that started life at Hampstead Theatre two years ago until a swift resettlement into the West End’s Harold Pinter Theatre, is a very English brew of kitchen-sink drama, love and ribaldry. Speared right through its brassy soul is said band’s seemingly endless, absurdly good songs all played live by the cast and two other supporting musicians curled away in the corner.
The show is set between 1964 and 1966 (lots of anachronistic Kinks music duly forgiven then) and follows the early days of the fraternally dysfunctional group. From main songwriter Ray Davies penning tunes in his Muswell Hill bedroom through to signing a record deal with out-of-touch elders intent on milking Ray’s talented teat barren, it finishes shortly after the foursome are banned from America for their putative on-stage rowdiness.
Heavily highlighted throughout is Ray’s character, played brilliantly by Danny Horn, which is unsurprising considering the whole show is based on his original story. So expect a sympathetic rendering of the older Davies brother and zilch room for younger sibling Dave’s slight but worthy numbers — unjust for the au fait fans in the audience but unnoticeable to the rest.
The latter is performed by the spry Oliver Hoare: immature and hedonistic as well as cross-dressing (at one point he swings on a chandelier in a pink frock), he’s a much needed counterpoint to the otherwise solemn, sensitive Ray whose trouble balancing fame and marriage and dealing with the childhood death of his sister threatens to strangle the storyline with a mawkish tether.
In fact, the meat of the comedy – often wickedly bawdy – revolves around both ‘Dave The Rave’ as well as the group’s trio of managers, where class and age divisions are as ripe for ripping into on stage as Ray did on record. It’s here that the ironing out of the band’s, well, kinks so to speak, are uncomfortably smoothest. For example, it’s the well-to-do managers that break out into ‘A Well Respected Man‘, a song originally meant as a sneer at folk like them. The mocked finally mocking back.
But it’s when the songs are played by the band only that the real reminding power of The Kinks is truly felt. Quite literally during the scene when Ray and Dave are working out the riff to ‘You Really Got Me‘ and the amp volume is increased (and amp cover sliced, of course), your skeleton shakes. These acts of pure beano outweigh the soft snippets of songs that punctate Ray’s ‘tortured soul’ moments. Which is often.
Once described by Penhall as a ‘cancerous feud’ when talking about his relationship with Ray Davies, all appears to be forgiven during the ‘Lola‘ finale when the real, gum-chewing Ray Davies walks out on stage. Collective anticipation from the just about dancing crowd, who’ve been strangely reticent all night, that they might be treated to a boon of performance by Mr Kinks himself is floored when he evaporates back into the stage left.
A straighter Kinks than some might remember, nonetheless the puissance of Sunny Afternoon’s music and dextrous actors, not to mention the glitzy 60s outfits, magnificently carries it off well into the Waterloo Sunset.
