Ahead of Sunny Afternoon kicking off its second UK tour at Palace Theatre in Manchester, I spoke with Danny Horn, who is reprising his role as Ray Davies for the third time in a decade, including a previous run on the West End and the North American premiere earlier this year, in the acclaimed Kinks musical.
For any of our readers who haven’t heard of the show before, and there won’t be many, how would you sum up Sunny Afternoon and your role as Ray in just a few words?
Well, Sunny Afternoon tells the story of the iconic British band The Kinks, charting basically the first four years of their career from 1964 when they were just basically barely teenagers to 1966, 1967, and the amount of ridiculous chaos that they managed to get into within those few years, you know, it puts every other rock and roll band to shame. We tell this story [about] this crazy chaotic band who aren’t just a band, also a family because of course the two brothers are the two front men, Ray Davies, who I play, and his brother, Dave, who although they loved each other, they didn’t really like each other, and that animosity, you know, was kind of a blueprint for the Gallagher brothers and and is a key part of our story and also the success and the chaos of the band. That’s it!
It sounds like a really fun show!
Yeah, it’s great and all the music is live. We play all The Kinks tunes. Not only do we play them live, but we play them on exactly the same guitar brands that they played in. Exact. Not only that, we played those exact guitars through the same PA systems that they would have used in 1964, so it sounds exactly like what The Kinks would have sounded like in the 1960s hayday.
Wow, so it’ll be just like going to a Kinks gig then!
It’s like going to a really great gig and also a really great play that just happens to be a true story about a working-class band who got really lucky and was fronted by Ray Davies, who, um, also happens to be, in my opinion, the greatest, uh, songwriter that this country has produced in the last hundred years.
And I know you’re a musician yourself. How much of yourself as a musician do you bring to Ray?
Well, I think when you’re playing a part, there’s always going to be a certain amount of yourself that comes with it, just because you come with it. You know, it’s my heart, my soul, my brain, my body, um, my voice. So, there’s certain things that are just going to be there, but it’s not a conscious thing. Well, I mean, it’s always really a useful exercise early on when you’re playing a real person is to figure out not not how you’re similar, but how you’re different. You know, and then once you get out your differences, you can lean into those spaces a little bit more.
As a musician, I find it really interesting to play another musician because I’ve got an insight into the sort of process of writing songs. Not that I would ever dare compare myself to Ray Davies, you know, he’s amazing, but it’s interesting to sort of imagine what it would have been like to write songs like ‘Waterloo Sunset’ and ‘Sunny Afternoon’, ‘Lola’, ‘Dead End Street’. It’s interesting to get into that headspace, especially from the perspective of someone who does write songs, and I know how difficult it is to write songs, and the strange sort of place you have to go to in order to tap into that sort of creative field. So, yeah, I guess I bring a little bit of that into my playing of Ray, but I also think I’m probably healthily quite different to Ray.
That’s good, you wouldn’t want to be exactly the same as him.
No, no they got up to so much mischief and it was so yeah there was toxicity in that group I would hate to think that I was bringing that to my own band or my own family.
And you’ve been playing Ray quite a while haven’t you? Did you start with the cast on the West End?
That’s right. Yeah. I did it in the West End about 10 years ago. I was younger, 10 years younger, than I am now. I was quite young to do it I think at the time. And I thought that’d be it. I had this incredible year doing it on the West End playing the lead singer, one of my all-time favourite bands. And it was a wonderful, great experience. And I let it go. And years and years passed, I carried on working on different roles and doing music stuff and other acting things. And then it was December last year, just coming up to a year ago, I got a call saying we’re bringing the show to America, to Chicago. And they asked would you like to reprise your role as Ray? And suddenly I was thrust back into this incredible world and this great part. And with 10 years more life experience, and experience within the industry to, you know, hopefully build on what I did 10 years ago, or kind of start again with it really and see how I would play it this time around.
In terms of the music, have there been any songs that were your favourite before to play, and maybe have changed this time around? How’s it been stepping back into all of those songs again?
That’s a good question, because there are songs that maybe I didn’t like so much 10 years ago and I seem to really enjoy this time around. A song, it’s not that I ever didn’t like this song, but there’s a song called This Time Tomorrow, which is a great Kinks song. And I was aware that it was some people’s favourite and I was like, I don’t know why; it’s hard to sing. And I think that was it. It was hard to sing, and that’s why I struggled with it.
Coming back to it has become a real favourite. It’s so joyful and interesting. And if you can sort of get on top of the song, rather than letting the song run away from you, it’s actually really exciting. So there’s that one. And I love all the songs, you know, I mean some more than others. I mean some of the King songs truly are, in my opinion, the greatest, some of the greatest British songs ever written. And I’ve done them so many hundreds of times, and they haven’t gotten old for me at all yet, which is just a testament to the strength of the songwriting.
How have rehearsals been going, and how has it been working with Edward Hall again?
Well, one of the things I love about working with Ed, because I’ve worked with him a lot now over quite a long period of time, albeit on one thing, but he brings such brilliant, optimistic warmth to his directing. There’s never a negative, there’s never a problem. The other great thing about Ed is he is so brilliant at casting, and not just the quality of the actors that he finds, and they are top quality, but they’re all so decent, you know. Every time he puts a company together, we all end up getting on so well, and there’s no ego, there’s no drama. You know, everyone is just there because they’ve got a love for the work and respect for it and respect for each other.
And so this time around, my third set of cast mates for this, for the show, again, they’re absolutely fantastic. And anyone who wants to come and see this tour, the show is as good as it’s ever been. You know, it’s not a watered-down version; it’s as strong as it’s ever been. And I’m really excited to, along with my brilliant fellow cast mates, share this story yet again because it’s in great shape and the music of The Kinks seems as prevalent and as vibrant as it did 10 years ago, and indeed it did 60 years ago when it was all released.
Wow, I mean my next question was, what can Manchester audiences look forward to? But you’ve already managed to sort of answer that all in one.
Well, they can expect loud music. Yeah, it is loud. I think it’s the loudest musical ever. I think we probably break the law with the decibel level that we hit on this show. We will shake the foundations of the theatres that we play. And it’s really funny. It’s got incredible heart. It zips along. It’s got, it’s crazy, it’s unpredictable. And of course, the music that is interwoven, and it’s not shoehorned in like some jukebox musicals tend to be. The music is the play, and the play is the music. It’s Manchester. They are going to love it, especially as they’ve got a history of warring brothers and bands. I think that they will definitely recognize a little bit of the Gallagher brothers and the Davis brothers, you know?
Oasis took over the city a few months ago, so I’m ready for The Kinks to do the same!
We’ll do our best.
Sunny Afternoon runs at Palace Theatre Manchester until October 17 2025 and tours the UK until May 30 2026.
Photo: Marc Brenner
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