Danny Horn, left, Oliver Hoare, Zakarie Stokes and Harry Curley in The Kinks’ musical Sunny Afternoon. Picture: Manuel Harlan
WHEN first encountering Sunny Afternoon at the Grand Opera House in February 2017, the Mother Shipton of reviewers envisaged The Kinks’ musical would be returning again and again, in the manner of Buddy: The Buddy Holly Story.
More than eight years later, that prediction finally comes true and not before time as Joe Penhall and Ray Davies’s Olivier Award-garlanded confluence of sunny afternoons and dark days will be here all day and all of the night from November 11 to 15.
“In these times of political uncertainties, it is a relief to know that Sunny Afternoon is on the horizon to lift our spirits,” says Kinks’ frontman and principal songwriter Ray Davies, now 81, who provides the show’s music, lyrics and original story.
Charting the highs and lows of The Kinks against the backdrop of the rebellious British Sixties, Sunny Afternoon celebrates the raw energy and the fevered life, the anarchic attitude and the controversies, the mendacious, manipulative management and the brotherly spats of the Muswell Hill firebrands that hold a place in pop history as the first British band to be banned from the United States, as re-told in Penhall’s witty and moving dialogue.
Playing Ray Davies on the Sonia Friedman Productions and ATG Productions tour is Danny Horn, who starred in the role for more than a year in the West End from 2015, then reprised it in the North American premiere at the Chicago Shakespeare Theater from January to May this year.
“I’d just finished it in London when I had a choice to jump from the West End version to the tour, but we’d been in the West End for 15 months, and I just needed a break, but I would have loved to have done the UK tour, and I always had this little part of me that was gutted not to have done it then,” he says.
“So this time round, I’ve jumped at the chance to play this great role and tell this amazing g story all around the country.”
Danny was speaking “deep in the belly of rehearsals at the London Irish Centre in Camden, a somewhat eccentric place with lots of Irish dancing sessions going on next door and Strictly Come Dancing rehearsals too”.
“It’s been a strange year because I didn’t know if I’d ever return to the role, but I’ve now rehearsed it with two different companies, all within one year. The experience in Chicago was fantastic and we had a brilliant company. Audiences over there absolutely loved it.
“But what I will say about this piece is that it is quintessentially English. We kind of take the mickey out of America a little bit, and it was interesting to see how they’d receive that over there, but something about the current political climate…at the moment, theatre audiences in America are actually very, very happy to make fun of themselves. And put their hands in the air and go, ‘yeah, give us your best shot’. They were really cool about it!”
“The Kinks were always mythologised in my household, growing up as this local band,” says Danny Horn
Danny and Oliver Hoare revisited their West End roles as Ray and Dave Davies in Chicago. “And he’s with me again now for the UK tour,” says Danny. “We come as a set!” You probably get on better than Ray and Dave did, Danny? “Yeah, that’s not too difficult.”
Danny was in his mid-20s when he first played Ray. “I was very, very aware of The Kinks’ music when I was young, partly because my father grew up in Muswell Hill in the 1960s, only a few doors down, and so The Kinks were always mythologised in my household, growing up as this local band.
“So I had a connection with them way before I even came to play Ray Davies, so when the opportunity came up, it felt like destiny appearing in front of me. It feels a particular honour to get to step into the shoes of this incredible singer-songwriter, whose music was playing so much in my house when I was growing up.”
Just as, if the Nineties’question is Blur or Oasis, the answer is Pulp, so, if the Sixties’ question is The Beatles or The Rolling Stones, the answer is The Kinks at their Waterloo Sunset peak. “Obviously Lennon & McCartney’s impact is almighty, and no-one can really compare, but I think Ray Davies is our all-time greatest singer-songwriter singularly. There’s no-one like him.
“Lennon & McCartney needed each other, but Ray was an absolute force to be reckoned with. Also, he wrote in a way that no-one else wrote. He was writing pop songs in 1967 which start with ‘From the dew-soaked hedge creeps a crawly caterpillar’ [Autumn Almanac]. Who, in their right mind, would start a lyric like that other than Ray Davies?
“He has three separate songs about drinking tea, yet he was one of the most dangerous, difficult pop stars of the 1960s, at the height of the artform.”
Sunny Afternoon charts the first four-five years of The Kinks’ career. “They were this unlikely bunch of working-class lads who basically against all odds managed to succeed. They were at each other’s throats half the time; they were managed by a bunch of very well meaning, upper-class twits who didn’t know the first thing about the music industry, and somehow their talent won out against everything.
“It’s the most turbulent story. It’s amazing that the story’s not better known, because everyone seems to know the story of the Stones and The Beatles, but this is an extraordinary tale about lads who, especially the two brothers, didn’t like each but they loved each other. They needed each other, loved each other, but couldn’t really stand to be in the same room, let alone on the same stage with each other.
“It’s a brilliant, gripping tale, fundamentally about family, the class system and about mental health of a young man who was fragile and thrown into this world completely beyond his control – with pressure to come up with so much original music, which he did.”
Sunny Afternoon, Grand Opera House, York, November 11 to 15, 7.30pm plus 2.30pm Wednesday, Friday and Saturday matinees. Age guidance: 12 plus. Box office: atgtickets.com/york.
‘It’s a story about resilience, really, about keeping your head when the world’s spinning too fast,’ says Ray Davies
The Kinks’ Ray Davies. Picture: Phil Tragen
HERE The Kinks’ songwriter discusses taking the Muswell Hill band’s story to the stage, their legacy and the next generation of fans.
How does it feel to see your songs and story come to life on stage in Sunny Afternoon, Ray?
“Daunting at first. I was working on the storyline on and off for three years, but in many ways the story is contained within the songs. The songs were written in such specific moments of my life and now they’ve been reinterpreted, given new context.
“It’s humbling, and sometimes a bit surreal, to see the audience connect to those moments as if they’re happening now. It’s proof that the music still has a pulse.”
You were closely involved in shaping the show. How did you approach revisiting your past and turning The Kinks’ history into a musical?
“With caution at the beginning so I pretended it was about somebody else. I didn’t want it to be just another jukebox musical. I wanted Sunny Afternoon to have heart, to show what it really felt like to live through that madness.
“We approached it as a piece of storytelling, not nostalgia. I went back to the songs and the memories behind them and tried to weave them into something honest. It wasn’t about polishing the past, it was about exploring it with the rawness that inspired the songs in the first place.”
Did collaborating with director Edward Hall and writer Joe Penhall challenge your version of events in any way?
“When you’ve lived something, you think you know the story inside out, but Edward (Hall) and Joe (Penhall) held up a mirror to it. They’d ask questions I hadn’t thought about in years and that made me reassess a lot of things. They didn’t rewrite my version, but they did expand it.”
Ray Davies poses by a billboard for Sunny Afternoon
The show captures both the highs and the struggles of The Kinks’ journey. What memories stand out most vividly for you when you look back on that era?
“The contrast, I think. One day we were scraping by in Muswell Hill, the next we were banned from America. There were moments of absolute chao, and others of beautiful clarity.
“Although we didn’t appreciate it at the time, the band celebrated being at the height of British culture, everything felt bright and exciting after coming out of the darkness of the SecondWorld War.”
Many of the themes in Sunny Afternoon – youthful ambition, creative freedom, the turbulence of the 1960s – still feel very timely today. Why do you think this story continues to resonate with new generations?
“Every generation goes through its own version of rebellion. For us it was a turbulent time of change, the class system was still there, but it began to feel that working class kids could also start to move up the social ladder. The Sixties were our revolution, but the spirit of that time – questioning authority, chasing authenticity – that never really disappears.
“I think people see themselves in that struggle, whether they’re forming a band or just trying to figure out who they are. That’s timeless.”
What has it meant to you to showcase your back catalogue all in one place?
“It’s been a gift. Songs like Lola or Days have their own lives, but when you hear them alongside Dead End Street or Sunny Afternoon you see the full picture. The musical gave me the chance to connect those dots for people, to show how the songs talk to each other. And it reminded me too, why I wrote them in the first place.”
What do you hope people will take away from the experience this time around on the new tour?
“The hope is that audiences will be able to see a glimpse of our history while enjoying a great night out. If people walk out humming the songs, that’s lovely. I hope they leave with a sense of joy, but also reflection. It’s a story about resilience, really, about keeping your head when the world’s spinning too fast.”
‘As a band The Kinks were the perennial outsiders – punk before punk,’ says Sunny Afternoon writer Joe Penhall
Danny Horn’s Ray Davies leading The Kinks in Sunny Afternoon. Picture: Manuel Harlan
Sunny Afternoon is heading back on tour. How does it feel to have the production returning to stages across the UK, Joe?
“It’s incredibly exciting to be doing it again. All of us involved feel we really need it in our lives. It’s got a medicinal quality that always makes everyone feel better about life.
“Since we started, over ten years ago, various cast and creatives have gone off and had babies, got married – sometimes to each other – become stars, played festivals and put out albums.
“We’re like a family that never grows old, somehow able to magically renew every time we regroup with new cast members…which is entirely appropriate since the musical is partly about family.”
What stands out the most when recalling premiering Sunny Afternoon more than a decade ago?
“The very first workshop was just Ray Davies and I with a piano and a handful of actors with guitars and tambourines. Ray would take them away for 20 minutes and teach them a pitch-perfect arrangement of Waterloo Sunset, exactly like the record. It was like a magic trick.
“Or I’d go off with Ray and he’d explain a particularly intense episode of his life to me in a perfect, poetic monologue and I’d build a scene from it. During previews at the Hampstead Theatre, Sir Tom Stoppard turned up and spent a couple of days feeding me notes and advice.
“When it opened, Dave Gilmour, Paul Weller and Noel and Liam Gallagher came, all big Kinks fans, all very approving. Geniuses as far as the eye could see!”
How involved was Ray Davies in the development, and what was it like to collaborate with him?
“Ray was across everything and in the early days was musical director. To work out the story, I’d go to Ray’s house every Friday and we’d drink tea and he’d tell me stories or show me clips, play me old bits of songs or suggest bits of films to watch.
“Sometimes I’d see or read something that inspired me and would show it to him and we’d figure out how it related to what we were doing. Sometimes we disagreed and wanted to go in different directions but there was always a kind of subliminal umbilical cord connecting us, because I’d been listening to his music since I was a child and he’d admired some of my work. (Davies watches Mindhunter!)
“It’s rare to have the luxury of developing a show that way, in each other’s pockets – a real labour of love.”
What makes Sunny Afternoon stand apart from “jukebox’ musicals”?
“Ray’s very theatre-literate and film-literate and knows everything there is to know about music. So we talked a lot about our favourite music, plays and films as we discovered the tone and atmosphere of the show.
“It’s rare for a musical artist to get so involved in the theatre, much less a giant of the rock world like Ray and that’s one of the secrets of our success.
“We didn’t just take the songs and cook up some filler to cash in. We both felt that the show had to be every bit as good as a great Kinks record – the same power to move, the same sophistication, emotion and wit – or else we’d have failed. And I think we achieved that.”
Why does The Kinks’ story and songbook continue to resonate with audiences today?
“The songs are both simple and extremely complex at the same time, but they speak to people on a profound level. As a band The Kinks were the perennial outsiders – punk before punk – and as they said themselves, ‘misfits’.
A scene from Sunny Afternoon. Picture: Manuel Harlan
“If the 20th century taught us anything, it taught as that it’s OK to be a misfit, to be different, to be unlucky or unloved or broke or lost – you still have power. It can lead to great success.
“The Kinks possessed immense humanity and a unique life force which is all there in the songs. People come to the show and feel euphoric and consoled and gripped all at once because they can see vestiges of their own lives in it – but they always end up on their feet dancing — and that’s the way we like it. It makes us feel alive.”
The new tour means new audiences, as well as returning fans. Have you made any tweaks or changes to the production since its original run?
“Unusually we haven’t changed a thing. If anything, the show is more powerful and resonant since Covid.
“In the scene where the band celebrates England winning the World Cup in 1966, it doesn’t feel like ancient history. It feels like the here and now — only these days it’s women winning the World Cup — and we feel the same euphoria now as people must have back then. The fractious scenes in America also feel incredibly current. In Chicago the audiences found it quite cathartic.”
Your career spans theatre, film and television. How does writing the book for a musical compare with those other outlets?
“It’s way more fun. It’s a little less technical and more intuitive, which is nice. With music you suddenly have this magic power at your disposal. It’s such a great tool for creating atmosphere, moving people, exciting them and stirring them up. It’s like being a painter and discovering a whole new colour spectrum.
“Even when I’m working on film or TV, I make sure to keep an eye on the music and really enjoy collaborating with composers. I collaborated with Nick Cave on the film The Road — it’s about the end of the world and a million miles away from this in every conceivable way — but also a joyous experience. I’m lucky to be asked to do such different things, but basically I’m flying by the seat of my pants.”
From the award-winning play Blue/Orange to the Netflix hit Mindhunter, how do you approach each different project. Is there a common thread?
“Believe it or not, there’s a thread between Blue/Orange, Sunny Afternoon and Mindhunter. They’re all pretty psychologically intense. They’re all about unique individuals challenging thestatus quo.
“In general, I treat my work as ‘found art’. If I find a story or characters or a situation or issue that stirs me up and intrigues me, I figure out how best to use it. Depending on its formal aesthetics, I’ll decide if it’s a play or a screenplay.
“Some things demand the wide screen of a film or TV, with camera moves and changing focus and atmospheric sound and music. Some just demand to be yelled out at night in a room full of people — dialogue to create a dialogue. But I could never just do one of them; I like to express myself in all sorts of different ways.”
Looking back on your career so far, is there a moment that fills you with pride the most?
“I try not to take too much notice of awards but the night Sunny Afternoon won four Olivier awards, one after the other, was my proudest. I was just so delighted for my friends – to see them winning best actor awards (original cast John Dagleish and George McGuire)— then to cap it all Ray and I won for the book and music.
“It’s almost impossible to make a show as individual and unique as Sunny Afternoon, but to have mainstream success with it was frankly a miracle.”
Finally, what excites you most about the future, both for Sunny Afternoon and your own upcoming work?
“I’m excited to take the tour as far as we can take it. I’d love to tour Europe and Australia with it. Or Japan! A lot of my plays go there and it’s also different and special. I love connecting with audiences from very different places and seeing how they react within their culture.
“I don’t know what’s in store in terms of upcoming work. I’m developing a couple of films, so I’d love them to happen. I’ve written a new play, which is hot off the press. And I have a couple of TV ideas too.
“You never know what’s going to come to fruition and what’s going to fall apart but the trick is, as Ray’s dad says in Sunny Afternoon, ‘Never give up, never back down — and never, ever forget who you are’.”