Oliver! will be the big musical at Chichester Festival Theatre this summer – in a season which will also tell the tale of the infamous Rolling Stones drugs bust.
CFT artistic director Justin Audibert has announced his first season in charge . There will be seven world premieres alongside modern masterpieces including a revival of Harold Pinter’s first major success, The Caretaker. Other highlights will include The Other Boleyn Girl by Mike Poulton, based on Philippa Gregory’s novel of Tudor intrigue.
CFT artistic director Justin Audibert has announced his first season in charge . There will be seven world premieres alongside modern masterpieces including a revival of Harold Pinter’s first major success, The Caretaker. Other highlights will include The Other Boleyn Girl by Mike Poulton, based on Philippa Gregory’s novel of Tudor intrigue.
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00:00 Good morning, my name is Phil Fewitt, Group Arts Editor at Sussex Newspapers. Now this
00:06 is a massively exciting and significant moment. The first ever Chichester Festival Theatre
00:11 Festival season from the new Artistic Director, Justin O'Debar. Now goodness, there's some
00:16 fantastic shows in there. It looks absolutely brilliant. Congratulations. I'm looking forward
00:20 to it so much. You must be, what is it? Is it thrilled, relieved, excited, daunted as
00:25 you say, here it is, this is my season? I'd say, thank you, Phil. It's a little bit of
00:31 all of those things. Overwhelmingly, it's excitement because I've been keeping these
00:37 and wanting to share them with our audiences and with the wider community in Sussex for
00:44 a long time. But I hope, you know, my aim is that there's something there for everyone
00:50 across ages and across tastes. You're saying that some of these projects have been bubbling
00:57 away for a while, but what does this season say about you, Justin? It says that I have,
01:04 I hope, it says that I have an eclectic set of tastes and they range from kind of really
01:10 cutting edge new writing in things like the House Party to obviously honouring the tradition
01:16 here at Chichester of that big summer musical with Oliver directed by Sir Matthew Bourne.
01:22 And then to reviving a classic play like The Caretaker by Harold Pinter, someone I esteem
01:28 enormously. And then, you know, new work of scale in the festival theatre with both The
01:34 Other Berlin Girl, Mike Poulton's adaptation of Philippa Gregory's novel, and then also
01:40 Redlands, the play by Charlotte Church about the incident, the police drugs bust at the
01:50 Redlands, Keith Richards' house back in the 1960s.
01:53 Well, there's so much that catches the eye in that season. But Oliver, why Oliver? Of
01:58 all the musicals, you're saying it's, if not the greatest, one of the greatest.
02:03 It's got everything, all the songs from I'd Do Anything to Food, Glorious Food to Who
02:08 Will Buy. It's got so much energy to it, I think is the thing. And that energy, you know,
02:17 it comes from having those, that gang of children, you know, that kind of runs through the whole
02:24 thing with a kind of cheeky, beautiful energy led by the Artful Dodger. And I'm very excited
02:28 about our casting, the Dodger playing Billy Jenkins, who plays Dodger in the TV, playing
02:33 the Artful Dodger, brilliant best cast. But it's got so much heart, you know, with Nancy
02:40 and Bill and with Fagin, who I have so much empathy for. You know, it's just, it's a wonderful,
02:48 wonderful story. And I can't wait to see what Matthew Bourne does with it.
02:52 And also in that season, as you mentioned, one that's got me quivering and dribbling
02:55 with excitement, the play about the Stones. That's going to be fantastic, isn't it? And
03:00 why is it such an important moment that that depicts, do you think?
03:07 It's such a key moment in British culture, I think, to be honest, because the police,
03:17 in collusion with the newspapers, were desperate to kind of bring the Rolling Stones down a
03:25 peg or two. And obviously, this bust happened because of that. But actually, society was
03:34 in a different place to where the police were at. And the kind of the way that it was a
03:39 moment that changed, where actually, I suppose you would say, the swinging 60s hit the like,
03:47 it hit the popular consciousness in a way that I don't think the police and the media
03:52 were expecting it to do.
03:54 And astonishingly, it happened here in Chichester, didn't it?
03:57 Yes, and it hit Chichester right at the start of it. This moment of enormous national significance,
04:03 which happened here in Chichester and started here in Chichester.
04:07 And that's one of the themes of the season, isn't it? Those ripples from the past, the
04:11 institutions, the events, the people, those things that come into play, ramifications
04:15 now.
04:16 Absolutely. I think I'm going to slightly get the quote wrong, but one of my favourite
04:20 quotes from David Simon's The Wire is, you know, you need a whole lot of context to explain
04:24 just about anything.
04:25 And I think it's really wonderful as I start my time here and look to things in the future,
04:31 but that actually some of that comes from an examination of where we are right now,
04:36 both in this theatre and, you know, in this society.
04:39 Well, it looks a superb season. Really looking forward to seeing things and to covering it.
04:45 So thank you ever so much. Great to speak to you and congratulations. Thank you.
04:49 Thank you, Phil. Thank you very much.