Sunny Afternoon – The Hampstead Theatre, London

I know the cup's an odd colour, but it keeps my coffee warm...

OK, so I know that Birmingham is meant to be my focus on this blog – it’s long been a frustration that our city has such cultural vibrancy, and yet as with so many things this gets forgotten in London-centric media coverage.

BUT, I have to make an exception here, and will try to explain why.

When I was 15 I somehow wound up with a tape left behind after a party.  It was a compilation of the Kinks’ singles, and I was utterly mesmerised.  I hadn’t heard anything like it before – chirpy, vibrant tunes married perfectly to beautifully-crafted pen portraits and vignettes of working class life in 60s London.  Pop music, which up until then meant little to me, suddenly became vital and educational.  I know that people use the term “life changing” with tedious frequency, but that is the best way to describe the experience for me – music became a huge part of my life, and has remained so for the decades that followed.

So, there was never going to be a question of not going to see the new musical based on the Kinks’ rise to fame, scripted by Joe Penhall and featuring a raft of Kinks songs.  I trekked down to London with expectations not as high as you might expect – in later years Ray Davies (the Kinks’ leader) has made some unusual artistic choices, some of which (an “Unauthorised Autobiography”) work better than others (the choral reworkings of Kinks classics, some of the collaborations on his recent “see my friends” album).  Would this be purely an exercise in nostalgia, or will Davies and Penhall have produced something worthy of the story of this seminal band?

In short – yes, absolutely yes.  The play covers the period from the early sixties to the start of the 70s, where the Kinks enjoyed their first rush of success, with all its euphoria, fame and wealth alongside the financial wrangles, excess and the damaging experience of being effectively banned from performing in the US.

Performances are strong throughout, although my biggest plaudits go to Adam Sopp as a marvellously sardonic and prickly Mick Avory, the band's drummer and George Maguire as Dave, Ray’s hedonistic younger brother.  Maguire played every mannerism of the more exuberant Davies brother to perfection, and cuts a hugely charismatic figure, attracting the eye whenever he is on the stage, much as the real Dave did during the Kinks’ high-energy performances.

As well as the acting performances, the musical side is expertly played – each cast member playing live (as far as I could tell) with some support from a couple of other musicians at the side of the stage.  This way of performing the songs worked organically with the action on stage (they were a band, after all) and landed a greater sense of authenticity to proceedings that at times felt more like a gig than a theatrical production.

One flaw for me was perhaps the inevitable result of this being Ray’s story, told on his terms – whilst his brother was well-drawn and sympathetic, I would have loved to have heard his best-known songs, Death of a Clown and Susannah’s Still Alive, but perhaps I am being too precious demanding my favourite songs.

Rumours of a Kinks reunion abound in this, their 50^th anniversary year, and whilst one must always be cautious about whether great bands reforming are a good idea, I certainly hope that this production will kickstart greater interest in what was undoubtedly one of the greatest bands of the 60s. 

I would say one of the greatest of all time, but then I am biased.