An extraordinary and unlikely chapter in Welsh history has been turned into a new stage musical billed as "Breaking Bad collides with The Good Life".
In the mid-1970s rural west Wales was at the centre of a global drugs operation producing and shipping vast quantities of LSD or "acid". The gang running the operation was eventually taken down by a huge police investigation called Operation Julie, one of the biggest drugs busts the world has ever seen which involved hundreds of officers from around the UK many of whom went undercover and immersed themselves in Ceredigion's hippy culture.
Now a new prog-rock musical play from Theatr na nÓg and Aberystwyth Arts Centre named Operation Julie after the police probe explores the story from both sides of the drugs divide – the officers who went undercover, and the people who settled in west Wales hoping to spread their counter-culture ideals. The play is billed as "Breaking Bad collides with The Good Life".
