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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

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”. 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. 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.

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