Lewes Live Literature Festival -
Linda Marlowe's 'Mortal Ladies Possessed'

Perhaps it is the multiple and varied personas that Linda Marlowe has adopted in her own life that make her so good at embodying those of others. In 1970 she became a one-off drug courier when she needed to raise money for her son's school fees, strapping marijuana to her body and successfully passing through American customs, in order to collect a $500 fee. In 1973, she swapped real-life danger for on-screen spoof violence when she became the cult B-movie private-eye, Harriet Zapper. By the mid-70s she had morphed into her next incarnation as one third of Britain's first all-girl rock band, the Sadista Sisters, dressed as half male, half female, and adorned with condoms and dead rats. In 'Mortal Ladies Possessed', which comes to Lewes tonight as part of the 'Live Literature Festival', Marlowe acts as a medium for the female characters of Tennessee Williams as they pass through a Deep Southern Boarding House, and are channelled through the central persona of the landlady Widow Holly.

In the style of her now trademark one-women show, ‘Mortal Ladies Possessed’ debuted in Edinburgh 2005 and has recently returned from a three-week run for the Brits on Broadway Season. It follows on the heels of a series of solo projects, the first of which, 'Berkoff's Women', paid a debt to her creative partnership with Steven Berkoff, (it was he who suggested Marlowe take on the format). This was followed by 'Diatribe of Love', in which she tackled the characters of Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Then in 'No Fear' Marlowe turned to her own rich autobiographical history for the first time for which she even learned the trapeze, aged 62.