Watch out for . . .
JOHN DAGLEISH and George Maguire, who portray, respectively, Ray and Dave Davies, the North London brothers behind The Kinks. Dagleish and Maguire star in Sunny Afternoon, along with Ned Derrington and Adam Sopp, Helen Hobson, Philip Bird, Tam Williams, Dominic Tighe, Marvin Springer, Lillie Flynn, and others. Written by Joe Penhall, with music and lyrics by Ray Davies himself, Sunny Afternoon is a powerful show that delivers you an authentic slice of the Sixties. It’s about creativity and the toll exacted when you attempt to retain your integrity and honesty, while trying to be a popular artist. The way Penhall has fitted Davies’s songs — they’re like poems — into his storyline makes them feel original and fresh, although most were written decades ago. Sunny Afternoon is being directed by Edward Hall at Hampstead Theatre. I caught a very early preview, so a lot of work was still being done, and Act 2 was incomplete. Yet I came away on the kind of high I hadn’t felt since I covered a rehearsal of Billy Elliot, which remains for me the best musical on the London stage.
Michael B. Jordan, octavia Spencer and Melonie diaz, who star in ryan coogler’s must-see feature film Fruitvale Station, which is showing at the Sundance london Film and Musical Festival at the o2 centre next weekend (april 26 and 27). The movie’s a true story about oscar Grant iii, a young african-american man who was shot by a transport police officer at a train station in San Francisco called Fruitvale. The picture won a grand jury prize at Sundance in Park city, Utah, last year, and was also shown at last year’s cannes Film festival. The fact that it hasn’t been released yet exposes the dirty little secret of film distribution in the UK. if there’s any hint of what’s known as ‘urban’ in a movie (meaning black characters and a mainly black cast) then the view is that white people won’t go and see it. check it out at Sundance london ( www.sundancelondon.com) and see what
you think.