Book: Joe Penhall
Music and Lyrics: Ray Davies
Director: Edward Hall
The Kinks were probably the Pulp of the 1960s. Never quite reaching the same heights sales wise as The Beatles and The Rolling Stones then, or Blur and Oasis thirty years later, but making the most consistently interesting music, and treading a path where failure and emotional breakdown always sat close to success and hedonistic excess.
Mirroring Oasis, however, the relationship between an older brother who joined, and took over, his younger brother’s band, is also a central part of their story. Joe Penhall’s book brings older brother Ray Davies’s version of events to a vivid and three-dimensional life that becomes much more than a jukebox musical biopic as it evolves.
As the audience enter, Miriam Buether’s set design is already working as an active backdrop, transforming the stage into a studio where band members practice, before the lights go down and it is transformed again into a dancehall where the band that would go on to be The Kinks are rebelling against Robert Wace, the lead singer who would go on to become their manager. While this is very effective, the clumsy introduction to lines from a song – Well Respected Man – that itself hasn’t aged well, does not immediately bode well for what follows. The introduction of an array of suits who in almost vaudevillian style talk and sing about the money they will take from the band adds further to the initial unease.
Things take a welcome turn for the better, when the suits meet the parents and the distinct characters of the two brothers and their family history emerges. Ray’s motivation for writing, and unease at everything that being in the spotlight requires, contrasts with Dave’s extrovert personality, desire for fame and determination to take full advantage of everything that would not otherwise have been available to him.
The music now serves to superbly underscore the story, either as songs the band are developing and performing, or arising naturally from the personal and professional conflicts played out.
Edward Hall’s direction uses the tensions between the two brothers, and between them and fellow band members, to underpin a narrative that goes from their origins in London, through an attempt to consolidate their success in the States that goes disastrously wrong, and on to the career redemption that culminates in the success of the title track of the musical and the iconic Waterloo Sunset.
Danny Horn as Ray Davies has the main role and captures the nervousness and contradictions of the introverted socialist, searching for validation as much as fame, while also aggressively fighting his corner and taking on anyone he disagrees with. As his brother, Oliver Hoare makes Dave a complex character in his own right, in spite of the comparatively limited dialogue and opportunities to step out of Ray’s shadows. The swagger he brings to the character both belies Dave’s age and is a product of it.
Joseph Richardson and Tam Williams, as management team Robert Wace and Grenville Collins, escape from the upper-class accountant caricatures they first appear to be to become people who seem to genuinely care for the band while also remaining outsiders in the world they come to inhabit.
Lisa Wright as Ray’s wife Rasa moves from being a strong individual with a prominent role in the early parts of the show to a supporting character defined only in relation to her relationship with him, isolated when he is away and trying to cope with his breakdown when he returns.
While there is more in the story of the band from the years between their peak and their return to the States that is captured in the closing moments of the show that could be explored, it still provides a fascinating insight into one of the most influential bands of the time. Most of the band’s best-known songs are present and correct, but there are also a lot of deep album cuts that perfectly capture the mood and moment they are used for, and provide an introduction to their wider back catalogue, that makes Sunny Afternoon far more than a greatest hits album masquerading as a musical.
Runs until 9 May 2026 then touring | Image: Manuel
