SUNNY AFTERNOON
Theatre Royal Brighton
★★★½
“an engaging, if qualified, portrait of a band that never found harmony easily, onstage or off”
Sunny Afternoon tells the story of The Kinks largely on Ray Davies’s terms. With an original story by Davies, whose back catalogue provides the music and lyrics, and a book by Joe Penhall, the musical places Ray firmly at its centre. Other members of the original line-up are present, sometimes vividly so, but this is unmistakably Ray’s version of events, and that perspective shapes both the strengths and limitations of the show.
As with many subject-shaped biographical musicals, darker truths are smoothed over. Ray’s struggles with alcohol are mostly absent, while the band’s volatility is reduced to clashes between Dave and Pete. Ray appears the sensible, buttoned-up genius, Dave the reckless foil, simplifying a far messier reality and veering into myth-making.
Danny Horn plays Ray Davies as an introspective, guarded figure, a musical obsessive whose inwardness is most fully explored through his relationship with Rasa, played with warmth by Lisa Wright. By contrast, the rest of the band are drawn more broadly. Oliver Hoare’s Dave Davies is louche, volatile and impulsive, embodying the excesses of a sex, drugs and rock and roll lifestyle. Harry Curley brings a steady presence to Pete Quaife, though the character remains lightly sketched. Zakarie Stokes’ Mick Avory barely registers in the first act, and his extended drum solo at the start of Act Two feels more like compensation than character development.
Edward Hall’s direction is strongest when focusing on the band’s formation and search for a distinctive sound within the emerging 1960s music scene. The opening contrast between a tuxedoed, doo-be-dooing crooner and the raw energy of The Ravens (their early incarnation) is knowingly artificial but theatrically effective, clearly signalling the shift from the 1950s into the Swinging Sixties.
The narrative moves from the breakthrough of You Really Got Me through mounting domestic pressures for Ray and Rasa to the ill-fated US tour that led to a four-year ban. Back in Britain, Ray confronts depression and legal battles, while also mounting a determined creative resurgence.
The music is integrated in two ways: some songs operate in a musical theatre mode, articulating emotion or narrative shifts, including Dedicated Follower of Fashion as the band get their makeover and Rasa’s aching I Go to Sleep as she struggles alone with a newborn while Ray tours. Elsewhere, songs emerge through writing, rehearsing and recording, with the slow assembly of Waterloo Sunset carrying real anticipation.
There is an emphasis on the tension between creativity and commerce. The system itself becomes the antagonist, embodied by Grenville Collins and Robert Wace, played with affable ineptitude by Tam Williams and Joseph Richardson, and Larry Page (Alasdair Craig), forever doing his best as the grasping intermediary. Eddie Kassner, given a harder edge by Ben Caplan, emerges as the closest thing to a villain, emphasising how the band’s artistic ambition was constantly challenged by financial exploitation. The Moneygoround lands especially well here, naming names and exposing the machinery behind the scenes.
Miriam Buether’s striking three-sided wooden set, stacked with speakers, adapts fluidly to studios, homes and stages, with stars and stripes unfurled during the US tour. Costumes chart the band’s evolution from matching suits to greater individuality. The cast play their own instruments, supported by a small onstage band, lending credibility to the performance scenes.
The second act does run long. The drum solo and a cluster of melancholic moments between Ray and Rasa extend emotional beats that have already landed. As a jukebox musical, Sunny Afternoon occasionally struggles to reconcile musical theatre convention with the sharper edge of The Kinks’ songwriting.
Still, there is real pleasure here. Ray Davies wrote some extraordinary songs, witty, observant and socially alert, even if the show only partially explores that sharpness. Uneven and occasionally self-mythologising, Sunny Afternoon remains an engaging, if qualified, portrait of a band that never found harmony easily, onstage or off.
SUNNY AFTERNOON
Theatre Royal Brighton then UK Tour continues
Reviewed on 17th December 2025
by Ellen Cheshire
Photography by Manuel Harlan
