00:00I'm Danny Horne. I play Ray Davis of The Kinks in the production Sunny Afternoon, which chronicles the first four or five years of The Kinks, the iconic 1960s rock and roll group who, in their own way, changed the face of music.
00:15And those ripples are still being felt, you know, now. And it's a show about family, about corruption, about mental health, but more than anything else about this incredible band that wrote amazing songs.
00:29It's so cleverly written and it doesn't feel like a sort of traditional jukebox musical, you know, where sometimes the songs maybe feel a little shoehorned in.
00:39Essentially, I always think, first and foremost, this is a play about The Kinks.
00:43You know, you meet them when they're in their very early 20s and they're kind of a backing group for a posh bloke.
00:50They realise the real talent is in the backing group. The posh guy becomes the manager along with his assistant and they're off immediately to the races.
01:00Every great Kinks hit that you want to hear is going to be there.
01:04But also because Ray Davis's writing was so extensive and he was so prolific.
01:09There's so many songs that are probably less loved, you know, underappreciated gems that we use to help tell the story.
01:17My dad is from Muswell Hill, just down the road.
01:22You know, we're talking, you know, 100 metres down from where the Kinks lived and they grew up.
01:27And so the Kinks, when I was growing up, were sort of mythologised in my house as this local band that we had a connection to, you know, tenuous as it might be.
01:36And then I think I was in my mid-20s when I got the audition to play Ray.
01:42Suddenly I was telling this story that felt linked to me.
01:45We moved around a lot in my early childhood until we settled in Ilkley when I was about eight.
01:50And I lived in Ilkley until, well, for 10 years, until I was 18, before going back to London to train to be an actor.
01:55And it was in Ilkley that, I mean, eight to 18, and those are the formative years.
02:00And that's when I developed my interest in acting and in music.
02:04I joined the Ilkley Playhouse amateur theatre company, which, and another local one in Ilkley called The Upstages, which truly, like, made me realise that this is what I want to do in my life.
02:18And youth theatre is so important anyway, and Ilkley really does offer a brilliant one.
02:23As far as Leeds Grand is concerned, my granddad is not with us anymore.
02:27He was a very enthusiastic amateur actor, and he would take me to West Yorkshire Playhouse and Leeds Grand regularly.
02:35It was our little thing we did together.
02:36And I've got very vivid memories of sitting in Leeds Grand with him, sort of wide-eyed, watching these incredible productions and daydreaming about it being me one day.
02:49And I've never, never played in the Leeds Grand.
02:51I've never played in Leeds, actually, since becoming a professional.
02:54And so it's going to feel really quite special to be there doing that.
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