Redlands By Charlotte Jones
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Welcome
A warm welcome to this performance of Charlotte Jones’s new play Redlands, our fifth and final world premiere of Festival 2024 – sending the season out with ‘a bigger bang’, and marking Justin’s own first production in the Festival Theatre. We’re delighted to welcome Charlotte back to Chichester, after the premiere of her play The Meeting in the Minerva in 2018. Set in a Quaker community in the early 19th century, The Meeting may not, on the surface, have much in common with Redlands which catapults us back to the musically colourful milieu of the 1960s; but both are set in Sussex, where Charlotte herself lives. It's a particular ‘Satisfaction’ (sorry, last Stones pun we promise) to be bringing this moment of local history to our stage. It’s been fascinating to hear so many of our audience’s own memories of the notorious trial at Chichester Magistrates Court, some of which you can explore in our free foyer exhibition; but we hope this extraordinary story will strike just as strong a chord with a younger generation of theatregoers as with those who lived through these remarkable events. Our superb cast includes several seasoned actors making welcome returns to Chichester, including Anthony Calf, Clive Francis and Olivia Poulet, alongside some of the brightest talents from the new generation. We’re already looking forward to a hugely varied Winter season, which encompasses musicals, drama and new work; but before then, ending the Festival season in the Minerva, comes The Cat and the Canary: a deliciously terrifying tale in a new co-production with Told by an Idiot. We hope to see you over the Winter, and that you enjoy today’s performance.
Justin Audibert Artistic Director
Kathy Bourne Executive Director
Kathy Bourne and Justin Audibert Photograph by Peter Flude
One minute to midnight. It’s time. Ladies and gentlemen, take a seat and I shall begin...
The Cat and the Canary Minerva Theatre 27 September – 26 October The Cat and the Canary, adapted by Carl Grose from the play by John Willard, is a hilariously chilling mixture of Agatha Christie and gothic horror that will have you shrieking with laughter and fear in equal measure. And there’s nobody better than the genius shape-shifting company Told by an Idiot, and director Paul Hunter, to tell it. Justin Audibert says: ‘Who doesn’t love a brilliantly scary ghost story as the nights get darker and chillier? This will be a physically entertaining piece of storytelling which centres around a motley group of characters who gather in a remote house in Cornwall to hear the reading of a will.
‘It has the perfect mixture of spooks, belly laughs and thrills to end the season.’
Winter Season 2024 – 25 Here comes Winter! Bringing a hugely varied season of the best touring work on offer. Fantastic West End musical hits like Come From Away and Six alongside eagerly-awaited new shows such as the Dolly Parton musical Here You Come Again. Drama based on popular and award-winning books with Birdsong, The Girl on the Train, Never Let Me Go and the hilariously inventive Pride & Prejudice* (*sort of). Classic dramas A Man for All Seasons starring Martin Shaw, and a Rattigan double-bill Summer 1954 with Dame Siân Phillips and Nathaniel Parker. And unmissable new work, from the musical After the Act to Bullring Techno Makeout Jamz, and Driftwood from ThickSkin and Pentabus. And in the centre, of course, is Christmas! We’re creating magical festive moments for everyone, young and old, from family shows Hey! Christmas Tree and Cinderella to the return of Santa’s Grotto.
Check out the full line-up of drama, music, dance and comedy at cft.org.uk
Making an imp We are delighted that Chichester District Council has granted planning permission for The Nest, a new 120-seat studio theatre created to be a vibrant hub for innovative and community performances from 2025. The news comes as two reports commissioned by CFT on its local impact are published. An Economic Impact report examining the monetary impact that Chichester Festival Theatre has on the economy of Chichester District shows that, in 2023, our net economic impact was almost £26 million – compared with £17.5m in 2014 and £20 million in 2016. This is substantially due to the expenditure (excluding tickets) by audiences attending the Theatre’s performances and events, but also the goods and services bought by the Theatre, its staff and artists from local suppliers. Meanwhile, a Social Impact Report has measured the social outcomes and longer-term impact of the Theatre’s performances, outreach and participatory
programmes – particularly the work of our LEAP (Learning, Education and Participation) programme, which provides over 80,000 participation opportunities annually for people of all backgrounds, abilities and ages. Drawing on the experiences of hundreds of participants, audiences, partners, visitors and staff, the Social Impact Report used robust social impact indicators to measure the effectiveness of the programmes. Among the findings were that 98% felt welcome and included; 93% reported a positive impact on their mental health and wellbeing; 90% reported improved knowledge and skills; and 96% of trainees and apprentices improved their career opportunities. Kathy Bourne, Executive Director of Chichester Festival Theatre, points out that ‘2024 marks the 10th anniversary of ‘Renew’, the major project to restore and upgrade the Grade II* listed Festival Theatre; our plans for The Nest show we’re not resting on our laurels.
mpact ‘We’ve always put our community first, whether that’s people who have lived and breathed Chichester all their lives, or the new community – whether students at the University or Chichester College, or those who’ve recently moved here. As Chichester regenerates post-Covid we want to be part of its future, building the audiences of tomorrow. ‘The Economic Impact report is a result of that commitment. The financial contribution is obviously meaningful, but we believe very strongly that commitment to our community is what powers our drive to ensure we sit at the heart of Chichester and all that it delivers. We’re determined to keep growing the artists and audiences of the future, and strengthen the remarkable work of our LEAP department, led by the indefatigable Dale Rooks whose exceptional vision was recently recognised with her well-deserved MBE.’ The Social Impact Report will also ensure that LEAP’s work will continue
to grow and evolve, says Dale Rooks. ‘For example, we are developing a Youth Theatre skills framework which will outline the progression of creative knowledge and skills from Year 6 to Year 13. Our ongoing evaluation processes will ensure that we are always reflecting on how we can further improve outcomes to strengthen the impact of our work.’ She acknowledges that measuring social impact ‘is not like marking maths with a right and a wrong answer. What can you put in place to measure how somebody’s confidence might have improved? Hence we brought in an external consultant to devise a framework of impact measures and to compile the report; but more importantly, worked with the participants and the people who gave their feedback to ensure there was a high degree of transparency and objectivity. It’s a comprehensive, detailed report that covers every aspect of our work. ‘What’s really lovely are the comments from the young people, parents, carers, teachers and supporters, so there’s a cross-section of people’s honest views of what they believe the value and impact of the work is. The stats are not always 100% and that’s how it should be; if you’re hitting 100% in everything, where’s the journey? Where’s the learning? We have to digest the Report and use it as a platform and foundation to look at the areas where we might improve. It’s a demonstration not just of the value of what we do for the community, but what we do to achieve that.’
Provenance Community Sustainability Creating exceptional food to enhance your Festival experience
Our ethos Delicious dishes are only as good as their component parts and community is a key factor for Caper & Berry and CFT. We believe that working with fantastic local producers has huge benefits to local communities and creates better environments.
In our larder Fresh ingredients have been at the centre of Caper & Berry’s ethos since 2004: Ultra Sustainable Suppliers
Chef’s Farms
- Tempus Cured Meats - Charlie’s Smokehouse - Cadd Oxshott Pizza
- Slade Farm Asparagus - Secretts Farm Leaves - Surrey Watercress
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Redlands By Charlotte Jones
From covers b to songwriter for the ages The Rolling Stones made their live debut at London’s Marquee Club on 12 July 1962.
band rs
Paul Sexton charts how Mick and Keith composed rock history
When the Rolling Stones made their live debut at London’s Marquee Club on 12 July 1962 – as a replacement for Blues Incorporated, who had been called away for a radio session – the number of original songs in their set was zero. With the release of their fourth album Aftermath in 1966, their creative coming of age was complete: every track was a Mick Jagger/Keith Richards original. The monumental songwriting achievements of the Glimmer Twins have reinforced their credentials from that day to this. Every track but one on the universally lauded 2023 album Hackney Diamonds bore the Jagger-Richards marque (three of them as collaborations with ‘the kid’, as Keith called producer-musician Andrew Watt). One of the band’s heroes, Muddy Waters, disturbed the monopoly via the 1950 staple that named the band in the first place, ‘Rolling Stone Blues’. Of all the countless occasions I’ve shared the Stones’ company over 30-odd years, one that goes especially deep is sitting in the garden of Keith’s home in Connecticut in 2010, our interview duties for his then-new Life memoir complete. Before I returned to New York, there was precious time to chill and chat as music wafted out onto the deck from the stereo inside the house. Who dominated the playlist? Muddy Waters. The Stones paid tribute to the Mississippi blues titan in that very first gig, performing his 1953 single ‘Mad Love (I Want You to Love Me)’. The Marquee show also featured covers of many of their other rhythm and blues muses… Jimmy Reed, Robert Johnson, Bo Diddley, Elmore James, Chuck Berry. A lifetime later, they still conjure the names of those giants every time we speak, as well as those of the great soul performers whose stage presence was a whole other inspiration, from Solomon Burke via James Brown to Prince. It was Berry’s ‘Come On’ that provided the group’s first single. Even if it came to sound tentative by the groundbreaking standards they would soon set, that June 1963 release was a significant footprint
in the sand, soon to be followed by ‘I Wanna Be Your Man’, bequeathed by their friends and fellow teething songwriters, a certain John and Paul.
As Mick said of manager Andrew Loog Oldham’s early efforts to force Keith and him to come up with their own work: ‘We couldn’t write rock songs. We just wrote these crap ballads’. The Stones’ self-titled debut LP landed in April 1964, soon beginning a 12-week
The Stones’ self-titled debut LP landed in April 1964. Photo Badgreeb Records
UK chart reign, spending 36 out of 37 weeks in the top three. Only one of its dozen tracks, ‘Tell Me (You’re Coming Back)’, was a Jagger-Richards original, and that a rudimentary and derivative workout. As Mick said decades later of manager Andrew Loog Oldham’s early efforts to force Keith and him to come up with their own work: ‘We couldn’t write rock songs. We just wrote these crap ballads’. Two tracks on that first album were group creations under the in-joke pseudonym Nanker Phelge, and the other nine were salutes to Diddley, Berry, Reed and other bastions of the band’s record collections such as Willie Dixon and Rufus Thomas. The Beatles were, by the Stones’ happy admission, ahead of them in terms
of both their arrival at 33rpm, and their songwriting self-determination. Please Please Me had appeared in March 1963 with Lennon-McCartney composing credits on eight of its 14 tracks. There were, of course, inspirations shared by the two bands; for example, both covered Chuck Berry and various Motown originals.
Keith would always call it one of their enduring achievements to take ‘Little Red Rooster’, an out-and-out blues song, to the top of the pop charts.
In 1965, Mick and Keith claimed three bylines on their second album, The Rolling Stones No. 2. This was soon after the group had scored their first UK No 1 singles with fine interpretations of Bobby and Shirley Womack’s ‘It’s All Over Now’ and Willie Dixon’s ‘Little Red Rooster’. Keith would always call it one of their enduring achievements to take the latter out-and-out blues song to the top of the pop charts, where it displaced the Supremes’ ‘Baby Love’, no less. But the Jagger-Richards imprint was strengthening and, with it, the directional influence of Brian Jones, essentially the group’s founder, grew commensurately weaker. Soon they had a voice that was entirely their own, not one merely channelled via their American exemplars. But the irony was that the first real proof of the pair’s growing confidence produced a hit not for the Stones, but for a teenager discovered by Oldham, their manager and master publicist.
‘A good pop song is not really that easy to write. It was a shock, this fresh world of writing our own material.’ Richards confirmed in his 2010 autobiography that the famed occasion when Oldham locked Keith in a room with Mick and told them to ‘come out with a song’ really did happen. ‘Why Andrew put Mick and me together and not Mick and Brian, or me and Brian, I don’t know’ he wrote. ‘It turned out that Brian couldn’t write songs, but Andrew didn’t know that then. I guess it’s because Mick and I were hanging out together at the time.’ The result was the charming ‘As Tears Go By’, a debut hit for a teenage Marianne Faithfull in 1964. ‘We weren’t trying to write a commercial pop song’ Keith explained. ‘It was just what came out. I knew what Andrew wanted: don’t come up with a blues, don’t do some parody or copy, come out with something of your own. A good pop