It’s a cold, wet, wintry evening in central Brighton as audience members take their seats at the Theatre Royal for a performance of Sunny Afternoon. Over sixty years after the band was first formed, The Kinks can still pack out an auditorium and, over the course of two and a half hours, this multi-award winning musical endeavours to explain why it is that the band’s enduring legacy lives on.
The biopic, jukebox-style production charts the story of the band’s formation, through its years as young upstarts who helped to spearhead the “British invasion” and onwards into its legacy era as a genre-defining act. “The band that changed rock music forever” are stunningly portrayed in the centre of a thrilling production that manages to capture the sound and swagger of the 60s.
Indeed, Sunny Afternoon is at its strongest when it leans into the nostalgia it conjures up – of a time when a band could still dream of a place in the mainstream charts – and it trusts the discography on which it stands implicitly. The Kinks’ back catalogue might be presumed, by the uninitiated, to be a medley of surface-level party hits from a bygone era. But, as is on display this evening, the songs pack philosophy amidst their freneticism. They are largely narrative-led, reflecting on the hopes, dreams and experiences of the band, and lend themselves perfectly to the biopic-style.The show is well-structured and avoids the musical trope of announcing a song before actually singing it. Instead the cast seemingly fall into each tune, plucking rhythms and riffs from the air. The impetus feels natural as the performers attack each hit with verve, carrying the audience on a wave of rhythm and beat from beginning to end.
There’s sex, there’s drugs and, of course, there’s a fair bit of rock ‘n’ roll too. But there’s also substance in what could all too easily have been a relatively soulless musical biopic capable of winning hearts but never minds. As it is, this production challenges the cynicism beneath the sequins, the superficial beneath the flares, as the band wrangles with the oscillating compromise of artistry, of authenticity vs commercial success. Behind the wily working-class foursome on the hunt for their “violent” sound lurks a team of bureaucratic middlemen, gateways or gatekeepers to success depending on who you ask. It is a battle of craft versus connections, charisma versus corporatism, and it’s one that rages on to this day.
As with many a musical biopic, the show lives or dies on the strength of its cast. Fortunately for Sunny Afternoon, it has packed its ensemble with virtuosic talent. Danny Horn and Oliver Hoare as the Davies brothers fizz with an outrageous energy, delivering wide-eyed, high-octane performances as they collide against one another, like two whirling magnets that attract and repel in equal measure. Lisa Wright adds a steely calm to the show as Rasa, providing the tether which anchors the narrative and a special mention has to be made for both Tam Williams and Joseph Richardson as Grenville Collins and Robert Wace respectively, providing the wholesome and humorous double-act that accompanies the band along its journey.
While the show might lack the “violence” of The Kinks it certainly encapsulates the feeling and, as the performance comes to an end with rousing renditions of You Really Got Me and Lola it sends the audience to its feet. Proof then that The Kink’s enduring legacy lives on that, as far as cold, wet, wintry evenings are concerned, a Sunny Afternoon is the perfect tonic.
Theatre Royal Brighton, Wednesday 18th December 2025
For tickets and further information click here
Photo by Manuel Harlan
