Rolling Stones drugs bust explored at CFT
The story of the infamous Rolling Stones drugs bust just outside Chichester and their court appearance in the city will be one of the highlights of 2024 Chichester Festival Theatre summer season.
Redlandsbycharlottejones will be directed by the new CFT artistic director Justin Audibert and will be on the mainhouse stage from September 20-October18.it’s1967.atkeith Richards’s country house Redlands in deepest West Sussex, The Rolling Stones are enjoying a bohemian night in with the likes of Marianne Faithfull and George Harrison until the constabulary swoop down and charge Keith and Mick Jagger with drug offences. Only one man can defend the two icons of the 60s revolution: Michael Havers, leading QC and future attorneygeneral.butthefurore alsobringsintothespotlighthis own relationship with his son, aspiring teenage actor Nigel Havers, who’s been drawn into Marianne’s orbit...
Justin said: “This is something that (former just Festival Theatre artistic director) Daniel Evans had been talking to Charlotte Jones about. Charlotte approached Daniel with the idea and I picked up the conversation. I think the really interesting thing is that it is a local story but one with huge national significance. It's also a piece of new writing and it's also a piece with live music on stage. You've got the episode at Redlands but the play follows the trials that eventually led to the Stones’ convictions being quashed on appeal. But the fascinating thing is that Michael Havers is the QC and he is Nigel
Havers’ father. You've got this family of barristers but there is Nigel wanting to run off and be part of the counter culture so you have got that counter cultureclashaswellbetweennigel and his father.”
The Other Boleyn Girl by Mike Poulton, based on Philippa Gregory’s novel of Tudor intrigue, directed by Lucy Bailey, will be the summer season opener on the main-house stage(april19-may11).asjustin explains: “It's the story of Ann Boleyn who is obviously one of the most famous people in the whole of English history but the main character here is actually Mary. She was really the prototype. She is the person that is put forward to advance the family’s ambition, but she is the person that comes out of it with a fulfilling life. There is something about showing the ambition and the corruption and the greed of the family, but it is also a redemptive story as she comes out the either side.”
Themain-houseseasonalso includes Coram Boy by Helen Edmundson(may 24-June 15) – a piece promising angels and abandoned children, glorious music and murder most foul whirling through an enthralling, moving and richly colourfultaleof18thcenturyengland: “It starts with a man who is approaching women that have become pregnant and would like for whatever reason to give up their child for adoption and they think that they're going to thefoundlinghospital.butheis a deeply, deeply unscrupulous man and he does not do that. Basicallythechildrenarebeing killed.thestoryistheunmasking and the undoing of this terrible crime. But at the same time there is a story of a young aristocratwhoisdeeply,deeply inspiredtobecomeacomposer but his parents won't let him.”