Theatre reviews: Sunny Afternoon | Dinnae Trust Anyone: Witches Of Peebles
Kinks tribute musical Sunny Afternoon is a thrilling invocation of the early 1960s, writes Joyce McMillan
Sunny Afternoon, King’s Theatre, Glasgow ★★★★
Dinnae Trust Anyone: Witches Of Peebles, Eastgate Theatre, Peebles ★★★★
The early 1960s in the UK was an age full of raw-but-brilliant guitar riffs that seemed powerful enough to shake the world; and right up there with the greatest of them is David Davies’s terrific founding riff for You Really Got Me, the number one hit that propelled The Kinks to national and international fame in the summer of 1964.
The joy of the Kinks tribute musical Sunny Afternoon – written by Ray Davies with playwright Joe Penhall, first seen in 2014, an now on tour in a new UK production – is the sheer energy and brilliant sense of theatre with which it captures the passion and drama of those years, which also saw the birth of The Beatles, The Stones, and a whole galaxy of British rock stars.
The show begins as Ray (barely 20) and his brother Dave (just 17), are forming their band (with drummer Mick and bassist Pete), developing their sound, and reaching the point of signing a recording contract, which their bluff working-class Dad has to countersign, because Dave is still a minor.
From that point, the story follows a familiar pattern of dizzying initial success, followed by difficult tours, wild excess involving drugs, drink and sex, collapsing mental health, explosive rows, and threatened break-up.
And by the time, in 1966-67, that The Kinks are releasing the iconic Sunny Afternoon, and the beautiful Waterloo Sunset, the show is winding to a close, with the band moving on to a new era, and Dave complaining that he feels old and done at 20.
Yet despite its two-and-a-half hour length, Sunny Afternoon remains completely gripping, thanks to two special qualities. One one hand, the acting is terrific, with Danny Horn as Ray and Oliver Hoare as Dave both throwing themselves into the drama and music with a passion.
On the other hand, the music – played live on stage by the cast, apparently using original 1960s kit – sounds absolutely fabulous, with the Glasgow audience loving every moment, except perhaps the big ticker-tape celebration of England’s 1966 World Cup victory.
And despite the band’s famous line about the tax man taking all their dough, there’s no disguising the voice-of-the people radicalism of their original musical challenge to a smug and conventional post-war Britain; or the sheer lyrical brilliance of Ray Davies’s writing, that underpinned it all.
It would be no surprise to hear a couple of Kinks songs in Polly Phillips’s eclectic score for Kath Mansfield’s remarkable community play Dinnae Trust Anyone: Witches Of Peebles, which played at the Eastgate over the weekend before a short tour.
Staged by Tweed Theatre, the play begins with a fairly sober Halloween retelling of the story of the 27 people – 21 women, six men – executed for witchcraft in Peebles in 1629. We meet the witch-hunting local minister, some of the women and men who were to lose their lives, and indomitable 19th century Peebles innkeeper Marion Ritchie, who sees herself as a bridge between those times and ours.
Later, though, the play takes an unexpected turn, as a haunted 21st century couple open up a conversation with the ghosts of the past, trying at length to explain modern-day witch hunts and social tragedies. They hesitate, they ramble, they leap almost chaotically from topic to topic; they confess their own secrets and lies.
Yet their words, and the responses of the historic characters, seem so direct, so raw, and so truthful that the effects is strangely moving. And when the 15-strong community company gather for a final chorus of Fairytale Of New York, this Halloween show morphs into a Christmas one; exorcising the horror of the Peebles executions which ended at last, on Christmas Eve 1629.
Sunny Afternoon is at the Playhouse, Edinburgh, 5-9 May 2026, and Eden Court Theatre, Inverness, 12-16 May 2026. Dinnae Trust Anyone: Witches Of Peebles is at Biggar Corn Exchange, 5 November, Carlops Village Hall, 7 November, and MacArts, Galashiels, 20 November.
The Scotsman’s arts newsletter is now sent twice a week - subscribe today
Want the latest Scottish headlines sent directly to your phone? Sign up to our new WhatsApp channel here.
Comments
Want to join the conversation? Please or to comment on this article.