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.
Marianne Faithfull at the Royal Court – archive, 8 March 1967
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.’”
It’s a long time ago, but I still have a distant memory of Faithfull’s radiance and luminosity. She was especially good in the early scenes where Irina, the youngest of the sisters, is celebrating her name-day with a joyous optimism and hope for the future. Some argued that Faithfull’s lack of experience showed in the final act, with the sisters’ desolate realisation that they will never make it to Moscow, but she had a genuine stage presence and more than held her own in a cast that included the vastly more experienced Glenda Jackson and Avril Elgar.
‘This deathly pale girl, exquisitely beautiful, arrived’ … Marianne Faithfull in Hamlet in 1969. Photograph: Everett Collection Inc/Alamy
Faithfull’s second appearance at the Royal Court, in Bond’s Early Morning in 1968, became something of a collector’s item. Because the play was refused a licence by the Lord Chamberlain, whose powers of censorship over the theatre were only terminated later that year, the play was initially given only two performances. One of them was a covert Sunday afternoon showing for the press, and my recollection of Faithfull as Florence Nightingale, who in the play is Queen Victoria’s lover, is of her mix of crinolined propriety and burning passion.
My final stage sighting of Faithfull was in 1969, when she played Ophelia to Nicol Williamson’s Hamlet in a Tony Richardson production. In truth, I recall little of that performance except Faithfull’s indulgent smile when Hamlet bids her go to a nunnery as if used to her lover’s constant invective.
Faithfull’s stage career may have been short-lived but she had star quality and, whatever the vagaries of her private life, exuded a lambent purity that was as uncommon then as it is now.
