Fury and denunciations: when pop idol Marianne Faithfull took to the stage – and silenced her critics
Faithfull’s casting in Chekhov’s Three Sisters in 1967 caused a perfect storm, yet she held her own against the vastly more experienced cast including Glenda Jackson. It was the start of many such triumphs
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Marianne Faithfull had to overcome a good deal of prejudice in her life. When, as a 21-year-old, she was cast as Irina in a 1967 production of Chekhov’s Three Sisters at London’s Royal Court, it caused a perfect storm. The press was sceptical about a pop idol going straight and Equity, the actors’ union, delayed giving her a membership card. Indeed, William Gaskill, who ran the Royal Court and directed the production, recalled being denounced at a union meeting as “an irresponsible and vicious poseur”. In the end, Faithfull gave a highly creditable performance and showed a rare capacity to convey innocence on stage.
Gaskill confirms this in his memoir, when he talks of the impact she made at a first meeting. “This deathly pale girl, exquisitely beautiful, arrived. I suppose I’d expected a bit of gorblimey but Marianne is related to the Sacher-Masochs and was more than suited to be one of the Prozorovs. One of the lines Edward Bond [who did the translation] gave to Tusenbach describes her perfectly, ‘Your paleness is like a lamp. It makes the darkness shine.’”
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