Review – Sunny Afternoon, Hampstead Theatre

” It’s not about the words. It’s about the atmosphere” says Ray Davies (John Dagleish) towards the end of the new Kinks’ musical. How apt.

By the finale, that atmosphere was something akin to a party. A party of people jiggling around (but not like their dads at discos – for this audience was largely too elderly to have parents still alive), in the form of a stage-managed standing dancing ovation. Sunny Afternoon is looking to the West End. Not very rock and roll. It ends up wanting to be Mamma Mia.