The Rolling Stones’ infamous drug bust inspires new play, ‘Redlands’

A play inspired by an infamous drug bust involving The Rolling Stones‘ Mick Jagger, Keith Richards and Jagger’s then-girlfriend Marianne Faithfull has inspired a new play, which will premiere Sept. 20 at the Chichester Festival Theatre.

The play, Redlands, is named after Richards’ country house in West Sussex, England. It tells the story of how Jagger, Richards, Faithfull were hanging out at Redlands when it was raided by police, and Jagger and Richards were subsequently charged for drug possession. The raid was put into motion by the tabloid paper News of the World, which was trying to get dirt on Jagger.

There were actually very few drugs found at the house, but the tabloids turned the story into a salacious one, gleefully reporting the detail that Faithfull had just taken a shower and was naked at the time of the raid.

Jagger and Richards were taken to jail, put on trial and sentenced to prison. But after public outcry, a famous editorial by The Times protesting the harsh sentences and a full-page ad signed by celebrities, Richards’ sentence was overturned on appeal, while Jagger was given a conditional discharge.

The play focuses on those events, as well as the lawyer who defended the Stones in court — Michael Havers — and his teenage son Nigel Havers, who went on to become a famous actor.

The theater’s artistic director, Justin Audibert, tells The Sussex Express, “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.”