BWW Interviews: George Maguire of SUNNY AFTERNOON!

We talk to George Maguire about playing Dave Davies of the Kinks in 'Sunny Afternoon' as it transfers from Hampstead to the West End, and what it's like working with the legendary Ray Davies...

Hello George! You must be really busy so thanks for talking to us!

It's a bit crazy, it's all go at the moment.

Are there many changes?

Not really. Nothing major. It was really important to keep the same spirit, so it's just little tweaks for the different-sized theatre - nice little icing on the top of the cake.

It's a really busy time for new shows and transfers.

It's unusual and quite against what you hear - new work not getting funding and people rehashing stuff. But there are new, original pieces of musical theatre, and new plays as well - the West End is buzzing at the moment.

Yeah, but unfortunately you don't really get to see the other new shows unless you have different matinee days....

You can hear how good they are. We hang out together but the schedules clash.

You're making a bit of a habit of playing musical icons, aren't you?

It's strange, and amazingly brilliant for me. I played Marc Bolan, which was a wonderful character to play, similar to Dave, unique, something special about him, and for me, trying to play someone real and iconic is always a great challenge. You can put your own character work into it and try to be faithful to what people remember about that person.

How do you approach it? Do you stick to the text, or research around it?

No-one really wants to see an impersonation. Essentially that's one-dimensional. You can go and see a tribute band if you want that - not that tribute bands are bad, but they're not telling the story. You want to get the spirit of the person- what's important to them, how they lived their life, I watch videos, listen to their voice, read books, and it sits in and becomes part of the performance. It's a work in progress, I'm still trying new things out, and it's about feeling comfortable with the real person as a character. Dave and Marc are similar to me in their love of music and their passion for what they do, but different in their physicality and their vocals - it's great, I can really not be me for an evening.

Now - what's Ray like?

He's AMAZING. That's really made this job very special. It's obviously from his story and he's worked with Joe Penhall writing it. To be doing these songs that he wrote and talking about his life and playing his brother in this amazing story - it's been incredibly exciting and special. He's really cool. He's lovely to us. We've recorded a cast album, and we did it at his studio, and he produced it. We were in there recording these Kinks classics with Ray, it was a real pinch-yourself moment. The album sounds great, he's really pleased with the show.

How much of a fan of the Kinks were you before the show?

It's funny, always. I've played in bands for years and they've always been a big inspiration. My dad used to play them a lot. I got the first phone call about the workshop in a taxi on the way to a gig with my band, and the first song we did was 'Sunny Afternoon' - my agent said, "Do you fancy doing a workshop with Ray Davies called 'Sunny Afternoon'?" I just said, "Er, yeah, of course!" To be playing that song with the man himself...i love the music and I'm discovering more about it that I didn't know. Everyone knows the big Kinks songs, and then there's a lot of slightly less known ones - they're beautiful and brilliant and fit with the story. Ray writes everything very autobiographically very well, so these songs seem like they were written just now for this story - there's no shoehorning in of songs.

Do you have a favourite song?

It's a hard question. One of my favourites isn't in the show - 'Autumn Almanac'. 'Waterloo Sunset' is hard to beat - it's such a classic. When we play it, you can see people in the audience time-travel back to when they knew this song or what this song means to them. It's brilliant to see the power of the song.

That must be quite rewarding for you as performers.

It makes it really special. That's something that theatre is great for. It brings a lot of emotions out, and we can transport people out to a time they loved. It makes it all really worthwhile.

George Maguire stars in Sunny Afternoon at the Harold Pinter Theatre.