Stage: Sunny Afternoon heads to Brighton

The Theatre Royal Brighton has given up panto and in its place brought in a far more adult entertainment for the festive season, a brave but brilliant idea. This year it is Sunny Afternoon, the Kinks musical, so we went up to London to catch the new cast in rehearsal and see the West End production.

Firstly let’s talk about the show. Stages have been littered with ‘Jukebox Musicals’ for years now. Strings of pop hits tenuously attached to an often lame plot. Sunny Afternoon is no such show! This is a tightly scripted drama about The Kinks and their early career, the successes and the disasters and it has been penned by the man himself, Ray Davies. It’s a frank and honest tale, warts and all, in which he spares nothing. Of course it is peppered with their hits which range from moving ballads to cheesy pop.

Rehearsals were intense, the cast are not simply playing the roles, they are playing all of the instruments too, every one of them, singing, dancing, acting and playing quadruple threats as they say in the business – and there’s not a weak one amongst them.

The joy of fabulous pop classics

Over coffee we got to meet members of the new cast bringing the show to Brighton. They are out of breath from the stunning number they have just performed for us but eager to talk about their show and how much they love it.

One of the new members, Mark Newnham, is a local boy who studied at Steyning Grammar school and then on to BIMM, Brighton’s very successful modern music academy.

“I seem to have found a little niche in playing 60s rock stars, I’ve done quite a few.” I asked if it is interesting as a performer to embrace the musical style of the sixties, it is a sound that they slavishly achieve in their performance. “I was a fan of 60s music anyway, bands like The Zombies and The Beatles and of course The Kinks, they are some of my favourite bands, that is my family’s influence and especially my mum and dad.”

Andrew Gallo has just played a mind blowing drum solo in the role of Mick Avory. I asked when he started to play drums. “I was quite young, about 12, and I backed away from playing the piano which I now really regret. Finally I persuaded my parents to buy me a kit, which they installed beneath our sitting room, a big mistake. I started playing in rock and punk bands but moved on to playing jazz and swing.” It’s a very flamboyant performance that he has just given. “That actually comes from my time playing in school orchestras where the other musicians would be playing seriously and I would be sat at the timpani giving it all this…” and he starts to flail and thrash his arms, a real showman. “It came from having to sit quietly for 48 bars before getting to do something.”

How did the drumming lead on to acting? “Well I started as a choir boy and we sang psalms, a few bars of melody repeated over and over and the choir master said that it was not about that melody but about the words, read those words, think about it. Words inform how you perform. At school I fell in love with Shakespeare and at Liverpool I studied straight acting, so now it is great to bring the two together, my musicianship and my acting.”

Is Mick Avory still alive, have you seen him perform? “He is and he still plays a lot of gigs around London and I’ve watched a lot of footage of him performing, I really want to see him live.”

How daunting is it to go on stage and perform the role of someone who is still alive? “It has to be a mix of a portrait and an interpretation. There has to be
a little of me in my performance and this is not Stars in Their Eyes either! You doff your cap to the real person of course but there has to be artistry.”

There were of course tensions within The Kinks, how difficult is it to get that across? Mark Newhnam who plays Ray Davies’ younger brother Dave replies. “It’s great for me because there are so many problems and fights between them and Dave is such a flamboyant character, it’s great fun but it has to be very precisely played.”

These guys are summing up what it is that lifts Sunny Afternoon above the ordinary. It’s real theatre with a strong script and a gripping story, one filled with anger and sadness but also with humour and of course the joy of fabulous pop classics – delivered so well – real entertainment.

Theatre Royal Brighton, 13 -31 Dec www.atgtickets.com/brighton | 0844 871 7650 (bkg fees apply)