The Edinburgh Playhouse cast grasp this completely. Danny Horn, as Ray Davies, gives a performance that feels lived‑in rather than imitated. His Ray is a man permanently negotiating with himself — the ambition, the self‑doubt, the instinct to retreat, the compulsion to create. Horn plays him with a kind of wounded intelligence, a songwriter who sees too much and feels even more. It’s a portrayal that understands the cost of being the one who writes the songs.
Oliver Hoare, as Dave Davies, is the opposite kind of energy: wild, impulsive, chaotic, charming, and occasionally unbearable — exactly as Dave should be. Hoare doesn’t soften the edges. He shows the danger and the delight of a man who lived louder than the world around him. When the two brothers clash, it feels real because it is real; the musical doesn’t pretend the band were a harmonious unit. The Kinks were brilliant because they were combustible, and this production honours that.
Harry Curley, as bassist Pete Quaife, brings a quiet, grounding presence — the conscience of the band, the one who sees the fractures forming before anyone else admits they’re there. Zakarie Stokes, as drummer Mick Avory, is the heartbeat of the show. His extended drum solo — a burst of working‑class fury and exhilaration — is one of those rare theatrical moments where the audience stops being polite and simply reacts. It’s sweat, noise, craft, and catharsis.
There’s a particular electricity when a musical arrives in Edinburgh and actually earns its ovations rather than coasting on nostalgia. Sunny Afternoon does exactly that. It’s a show built on songs everyone thinks they know, yet this production understands something essential: The Kinks’ story was never a tidy pop fairytale. It was conflict, class tension, family strain, exploitation, brilliance, and the uneasy business of becoming a national myth while still barely holding yourself together.
The musical also gives space to the people who shaped Ray’s emotional world. Lisa Wright, as Rasa Davies, plays her with warmth and understated strength. She becomes the show’s moral centre — the person who loves Ray but cannot save him from himself. Their scenes carry the ache of a marriage strained by fame, insecurity and the impossible demands placed on women in the orbit of genius. Ray’s parents, played with humour and honesty by Deryn Edwards and Ben Caplan, embody the post‑war working‑class world The Kinks emerged from — a world of ration books, hard graft and dreams that didn’t always fit the available space.
What the musical doesn’t fully tackle — and what hangs over the story whether acknowledged or not — is Ray’s long struggle with self‑destructive behaviour. The real Ray Davies has spoken openly about breakdowns, depression and periods of spiralling instability. The show mainly sidesteps this, understandably for a mainstream musical, but the omission leaves a faint outline. You sense the shadows in Horn’s performance — the fragility, the volatility — even if the script avoids complethly exploring them.
The ensemble deserve enormous credit. They slip between roles — managers, journalists, industry sharks, football fans, bureaucrats — with precision and wit. At one point they tear around the theatre draped in Union flags, celebrating England’s 1966 World Cup victory, which coincided with The Kinks’ rise. It’s chaotic, funny and pointed: a reminder of how national pride, pop culture and political identity became entangled in the 60s. The Scots audience were fairly forgiving here and singing Sunny Afternoon!
The songs, of course, are the spine of the show, but they’re never treated as museum pieces. “Dead End Street” becomes a piece of social realism — a portrait of poor housing, low wages and blocked mobility that punctures the swinging‑sixties fantasy. “Mr Pleasant” is performed with a wicked music‑hall grin, skewering middle‑class hypocrisy with the kind of satire British theatre used to excel at. And “Days”, often chosen for funerals, is delivered with a tenderness that silences the Playhouse. It’s a moment of stillness in a show full of noise and energy — a reminder of how deeply The Kinks’ music has embedded itself in the emotional lives of ordinary people.
The musical doesn’t shy away from the darker forces that shaped the band: the American Federation of Musicians ban, which kept them out of the US for four years; the legal battles with predatory early management; the sense of being outsiders in an industry built to exploit them. Ray’s line about learning more about law than music gets a laugh, but it’s a bitter one.
And then, of course, there’s “Lola.”
The moment the opening chords hit, the Playhouse transformed. People who had been politely tapping their feet were suddenly on their feet, dancing, singing, laughing — the entire theatre lifted into a shared moment of joy. It wasn’t kitsch. It was communal release. A reminder that pop music, at its best, dissolves boundaries and invites everyone into the same joyful, messy human space.
Sunny Afternoon, in this Edinburgh production, becomes more than a jukebox musical. It becomes a meditation on memory, class, family, exploitation and the strange business of becoming a legend. It celebrates The Kinks, yes — but it also interrogates the myths around them. It understands that the band were never just chroniclers of their era. They were critics of it.
And in a world still wrestling with class, identity and the stories we tell about ourselves, that feels more relevant than ever.
Reviewed by Pat Harrington
The next tour stops for Sunny Afternoon:
InTverness – Eden Court, Tue 12 May – Sat 16 May 2026,
Liverpool – Empire Theatre, Tue 19 May – Sat 23 May 2026,
Cardiff – Wales Millennium Centre, Tue 26 May – Sat 30 May 2026
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