Tale of infamous Rolling Stones drugs bust hits the Chichester Festival Theatre stage

Charlotte Jones’ new play runs from Friday, September 20-Friday, October 18 and will be directed by CFT artistic director Justin Audibert.

At Keith 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 attorney general. But the furore also brings into the spotlight his own relationship with his son, aspiring teenage actor Nigel Havers, who’s been drawn into Marianne’s orbit...

For Justin, it's a play that absolutely had to be on the main-house stage: “We did talk about getting it into the Minerva at one point but where I think the Festival Theatre is brilliant is with plays that have a big public element to them, whether it is the court in The Other Boleyn Girl or Dickensian London in Oliver! And with this one it's the fact that you've got two trials, the trial in Chichester and the trial in London. And straightaway you've got a great public-facing aspect and then you add to the fact that the music itself is brilliant. The Rolling Stones were the band that effectively invented stadium rock concerts, playing to these huge arenas. And you've also got the characters in the play, not just Mick and Keith but also Marianne Faithfull and Nigel Havers, who we all think we know. You look at all that and you realise the central premise is big and has to be on the big stage.”

The point is also that it is a key moment in our history: “Really it was the moment when the established order was really challenged by elements that it didn't understand, and then through the trial it was revealed that the general population actually wanted to live in a different way and wanted to embrace elements of the counter culture that The Rolling Stones represented. And in that respect I do feel that we're still living in the shadow of the 60s and this cultural clash.”

As for The Stones, what the play will attempt to convey, among so much else, is that Mick and Keith were both extraordinarily talented artists: “And you feel that the thing that has kept them going has been their deep abiding love of music. I saw The Rolling Stones at Glastonbury and they were brilliant but going through my mind was ‘What on earth is someone up there doing pretending to be Mick Jagger?’ They are so much in our consciousness!”

Caricature could be a danger in presenting them: “But we are lucky that we have got two brilliant and highly skilled actors for Mick and Keith, but what also helps us is that they were very famous by this stage but they were still relatable to the young men that they were. And there is also the fact we see them through the play how Nigel Havers sees them, how they are perceived by the 17-year-old who's part of the play. It feels that that gives us a fun way into them.”