'Ray boils at a different temperature'

Ray & Dave. 'Ray boils at a different temperature.'

Ray Davies and Dave Davies: the two patron saints of Muswell Hill. Any story about The Kinks could only ever be about the love hate relationship the two siblings from north London have had with each other for nigh on three score years and ten.

Setting it to music was always going to be a doddle (countless hit singles and albums on both sides of the Atlantic); hanging a story around it, maybe not so.

But Sunny Afternoon, which we caught last Saturday (the 2:30 matinee - I love matinees) at the Harold Pinter Theatre, pulled the whole working class oiks come good parable together quite brilliantly. A rags to glad rags story, you could say, and a sheer joy from start to finish. It played out, in a weird way, like a sort of Austin Powers meets Return to the Forbidden Planet. And the two young actors playing the battling brothers, Danny Horn and Oliver Hoare, were superb.

From power chords (You Really Got Me) to barbershop (a beautiful a cappella version of Days), via Waterloo Sunset (of course), much of it to a backdrop of dolly birds and hot pants (well, it was the sixties) this show, as they say, had it all. I feel a return visit coming on.

Booking till April 2016. 

For C