Blogmas day 8 : Sunny Afternoon At The Mayflower
8.12.16
I've been to about 3 shows at the Mayflower within the space of 3 weeks. I went to see the Wind In The Willows with my grandma which was very good and i hope it does well when it moves to London next year because everything about the musical was lovely and really puts you in a good mood. A week later and i was at the theatre again with my grandma again but also with a long time family friend and we went to see Million Dollar Quartet which was about the time Johnny Cash , Elvis Presely , Carl Perkins and Jerry Lee Lewis got together in Sun Record Studios back in 1956 for an jam session that was never supposed to happen but left a mark on the world of music. I wasn't expecting it to be that good but it was actually really enjoyable even if it did mean i was literally the youngest person in there. On Wednesday i went to see Sunny Afternoon with my grandad so i thought i'd talk about that for todays blogmas post !
Sunny afternoon is a musical about The Kinks. It was in London but closed October this year after opening back in 2014 and is now currently on tour until next year. The show itself is a great way of re-telling how such a huge band of its day got together , got signed and went through a rather crazy journey. I went in not knowing a lot about the band and came out knowing a bit more. The opening scene starts with them setting up their instruments before the show properly started.
The set was a wall full of speakers with a window at the back added bits that moved in and out of the stage as the show went on. There was even a moment where a scooter came onstage which was pretty cool. The stage had a runway which is something i'd never seen before and that was used a lot throughout the show. It was used to become an aeroplane and was used in a scene for a long distance phone call between Ray and Rasa whilst the band were in america. The music is mainly played by the cast along with a few other musicians that are in a corner on the stage. There was also a lot of involvement around the audience as the cast walked up and down the aisles to get to the stage at some points in the show which was pretty cool. The arrangements of the songs were really well put together. There was an bit in the show where it got all rather dramatic and a song was sang in acapella which sounded so beautiful until someones phone went off because they received a text message which kind of killed the moment.
What i loved about this musical is that it the audience was made up of the older generation who probably grew up listening to the kinks. Me and my grandad got talking to this woman during the interval who was sat next to us and she was telling me all about the musicals she had seen and how she had seen the actual Beatles back in the day. You always seem to get a lot of older people at the matinee shows which is fine by me because i love people that are a lot older than me. I find them easier to talk to plus i find them really interesting as some of the stories I've heard have been a mixture of sad things and happy things but mainly about live music and musicals. It was so nice to see so many people that were probably in their 60s or a bit older have a great time. At the end of the show everyone stood up clapping and dancing away which was lovely and of course being the soppy loser i am , i cried because this made me so happy to see people of that age reliving their youth again through the theatre.
Needless to say myself and my grandad loved the show ! Its one that contains every single emotion and well needless to say i didn't get stuck next to anyone eating their lunch next to me which usually happens but i did get sat behind two nice people having a conversation behind me a few times to so that was a bit off putting. Other than that i really enjoyed the overall experience of going to see this show. Its coming to a bunch of other places once its finished up in southampton if you want to go and see it.
I 100% recommend going to see this even if you don't know much about the kinks or even if you just love the music from that era then this is something you don't want to miss out on seeing. I've been coming to the Mayflower since i was 8 years old. The first show i saw there was a scooby doo musical that surprisingly was actually a great first show to go and see. Since then I've been bitten by the theatre bug and i cannot stop going to see musicals. Anyway i hope to include a lot more about the theatre on my blog in the future because the theatre has always been a big part of my life ever since i was tiny i'd go and watch the sooty show that used to come to one of the local theatres where i live. I did used to do dancing and performing arts but now i just stopped because i just didn't want to do the whole performing thing anymore which i instantly regret but that doesn't really bother me.
You can catch Sunny Afternoon at these theatres :
Mayflower Theatre , Southampton : 6/12/16 - 10/12/16
Theatre Royal , Brighton : 13/12/2016 - 31/12/16
Royal & Derngate , Northampton : 10/1/17- 14/1/17
Millennium Center , Cardiff Wales : 17/1/17 - 21/1/17
Theatre Royal , Nottingham : 24/1/17 - 28/1/17
New Theatre , Oxford : 31/1/17 - 4/2/17
Liverpool Empire : 7/2/17-11/2/17
Venue Cymru , Llandudno : 14/2/17-18/2/17
Grand Opera House , York : 21/2/17 - 25/2/17
Alhambra Theatre , Bradford : 28/2/17 - 4/3/17
Bristol Hippodrome : 7/3/17 - 11/3/17
The Bord Gais Energy Theatre , Dublin : 21/3/17 - 25/3/17
Marlowe Theatre , Canterbury : 4/4/17 - 8/4/17
Theatre Royal , Norwich : 11/4/17 - 15/4/17
Grand Theatre , Wolverhampton : 18/4/17 - 22/4/17
Grand Opera House , Belfast : 2/5/17 - 6/5/17
Theatre Royal , Plymouth : 9/5/17 - 13/5/17
Speak soon ,
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