Theatre
Sunny Afternoon
Edinburgh Playhouse
Neil Cooper
****
THE stage is all dressed up as a 1960s dancehall occupied by tuxedo-clad crooners at the opening of Joe Penhall and Ray Davies' musical history of the early days of Davies' seminal band, The Kinks. By the end, however, the hysteria of Madison Square Garden has whipped a nostalgia-seeking audience into a suitable frenzy. Inbetween in Edward Hall's touring production of a show first seen at Hampstead Theatre in 2014, the Muswell Hill born Davies brothers take on the world, crash, burn and come out fighting to produce a now classic canon of pre-punk music hall social realist vignettes.
Penhall's necessarily dot-to-dot script lays bare a tale of back street ambition, tortured genius and warring siblings, with sensitive songwriter Ray and his wild child kid brother Dave initially flanked by a living room full of sisters who rather handily double up as a swinging op-art chorus line. As the band square up to money men in London and New York, there is impressionistic commentary on class, the music biz, the mental strain of touring and a couple of extended scenes showing how a song is put together.
Some of the American scenes may be one-liners, and some of the themes may only be sketched in, but the songs help, especially as given voice by a cast led by Ryan O'Donnell as Ray and Mark Newnham as Dave. The full throttle hits are there, but so too is a four-part a cappella take on Days and a lovely I Go To Sleep by Lisa Wright as Ray's Lithuanian bride Rasa in a ferocious attempt to invest the tribute musical form with dark substance.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here