PicksInSix Review: Sunny Afternoon - Chicago Shakespeare Theater
It’s All About The Music!
PicksInSix® Review | Ed Tracy
The long-awaited Chicago Shakespeare Theater’s North American premiere of “Sunny Afternoon,” based on the music of The Kinks, opened in spectacular form on Friday in The Yard. Directed by CST’s Artistic Director Edward Hall, the show originated in 2014 in London, also directed by Hall and starring the enormously talented Danny Horn and Oliver Hoare as Ray and Dave Davies, the two brothers who formed the explosive core of the band whose music became the soundtrack of a generation during the British invasion of the 1960s.
For those of us in the crowd who witnessed this musical revolution in real time—and just about everyone else—heads were swaying and the response was electric. The Kinks broke out in 1964 and made their US tour debut in June 1965. It was a highly anticipated, and short-lived, experience that led to the group being banned from performing in the U.S. for nearly five years due primarily to union issues flamed by management disagreements and the internal unrest of the band itself. As this story unfolds, it’s clearly a tall order to be young, talented and unable to get along with each other except when you were making music together.
“Sunny Afternoon” falls in the family of jukebox musicals that showcase dozens of the iconic hits around a compelling backstory of survival at all costs. It follows the band’s rise from their first professional contract—signed by Ray and Dave’s father since no one was of legal age—to their return to America and a 1972 concert date at Madison Square Garden. Ray Davies is credited with all music, lyrics and the story for the book by Joe Penhall. The original London production received four Olivier Awards including Best New Musical and Outstanding Achievement in Music for Davies, landing closest in style to “The Who’s Tommy,” “Million Dollar Quartet” and “Jersey Boys,“ and offering a lens into our 1960s appetite for rock ‘n roll with a raucous twist and the unmistakable sound of that raw and rebellious era.
The risks are great in this musical genre. Will the vocal performances live up to the original? What about the instrumentation and collective sound? Does the story lend itself to support the music or will it be an impediment to the overall flow? And, what does it take to recapture the magic for a new audience?
Those questions are answered definitively time and again in Hall’s masterfully staged production, on a Miriam Buether set (and costumes) with a sound wall of 60s era amps and speakers and a runway into the audience that provides wonderful opportunities for the super-charged ensemble. Horn and Hoare, with Michael Lepore (Peter Quaife) and Kieran McCabe (Mick Avory), are brilliant vocalists and flawless musicians who spend nearly all of the two hour, forty minute running time of the show on stage. It all adds up to a magnificently jubilant musical odyssey from the dominate opening riffs of Hoare’s “You Really Got Me” to “Lola,” “Waterloo Sunset” and a string of distinctive hits including “Just Can’t Sleep,” “Dedicated Follower of Fashion,” and “Too Much On My Mind/Tired of Waiting.”
By the time “Sunny Afternoon” bursts on stage, Horn’s Ray has written the musical score of his life and revealed the trials and tribulations of a rock ‘n’ roll force of nature who did not compromise the most important part of his work: the music. Hall has tapped into a unique period that we can relate to. The turbulent times of the 1960s are not so much of the story here, but the subtext looks and feels a lot like what we face today. And it’s Davies’ lyric from “The Moneygoround” that tells the tale: “Oh, but life goes on and on, and no one ever wins, and time goes quickly by, just like the money-go-round, I only hope that I'll survive.” Thankfully, the Kinks have. What a trip!
PHOTO|Carol Rosegg
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