Play inspired by 1992 rave at Castlemorton debuts this summer

A play about the infamous rave at Castlemorton in 1992, told from the perspective of the area’s locals, is set to premiere in the nearby town of Malvern this summer.

The Last Free Rave is the work of first-time playwright Rachel Tobin and will debut on Saturday, 9th August at the Coach House Theatre as part of the Malvern Ink and Curtains Festival.

Tobin, who’s lived on Castlemorton Common for 20 years, told DJ Mag that the production opens with voice recordings of locals reflecting on the free party, which drew an estimated 20,000 to 40,000 people and became a landmark moment in UK rave history. “I’ve always heard locals talk about it in hushed tones, so there’s a bit of folklore around it here.” 

The Castlemorton Common Festival was a catalyst for the 1994 Criminal Justice and Public Order Act, a pivotal piece of legislation that first proscribed a genre of music — rave music, “wholly or predominantly categorised by the emission of a succession of repetitive beats” — in law. Tobin’s play doesn’t delve into that political aftermath as it’s “already been widely covered”. Instead, it shifts focus onto how the rave upended life in the surrounding rural community.

The play intersperses onstage action with archival footage from the BBC and YouTube. It centres on a farmer, his wife and a New Age traveller who is caught stealing strawberries from their land. What begins as a confrontation unfolds into an attempt at reaching understanding between two very different worlds. “The whole story revolves around these three characters — the friction between them and how a friendship forms,” said Tobin. “It’s a fictional narrative shaped by local voices and fragments of real memories. I’m interested in the emotional impact — the human story.”