Sunny Afternoon

My second trip to the Hampstead Theatre of the week (well it was awarded Theatre of the Year 2014), this time to the upstairs to see Sunny Afternoon. This was a musical biopic of the Kinks. It follows many West End successes like Mama Mia and We Will Rock You. in combining songs or parts of songs into a story line. This was the rise fall and rise again of the Kinks with the usual battles with fame, drink and record contracts.

Now one way of looking at a musical such as this is how amazingly clever it is to weave together all these songs into a cogent story, and marry it up with complicated choreography. The actors can all act and sing. Its all quite impressive. But not my cup of tea. And this is largely because while it is all clever, one ought to ask why one has to do it at all. A proper play could be interesting. If you like the music you could just listen to the Kinks Greatest Hits cd. Or see a tribute act. One doesn't need to splice together all these art forms.

I should add that the audience seemed to like it enough, especially the end when it burst out of being a musical and into a tribute act by just bringing the best unused stuff from the narrative at the close, notably Waterloo Sunset and Lola (particularly hard to fit a song about a transvestite in to the rest). At that point the middle-aged (veering to OAP) audience were up and dancing and that was probably the market for this - a nostalgia trip to the Sixties when the audience was young.

Yes it was well produced, the actor playing Danny being particularly good I thought, and the actress playing Ray Davies' wife had a very sweet voice. But I think I will settle for that Kinks cd.