TROI STORY
Art imitates life as Star Trek: TNG’s Marina Sirtis makes her West End debut…
I thought I was reading me!” says Marina Sirtis of new play Dark Sublime. “I just attached to it on a visceral level. I’ve never played a part that’s so close to me in real life, and that’s terrifying because it’s a vulnerability that I kind of lay all out there.”
Sirtis (aka Counsellor Deanna Troi on Star Trek: The Next Generation) plays Marianne, former star of Dark Sublime, a late-’70s/early ’80s sci-fi show on ITV. It’s the story of her relationship with an old friend and what happens when a young fan pays her a visit.
“I remember Tom Baker talking in an interview about the purity of fan love, how it’s an uncorruptible thing and it’s much more powerful than ordinary love,” debut writer Michael Dennis tells Red Alert. “Through the play we explore Marianne’s unrequited love for her friend and Oli’s fan love for Marianne, and the parallels and differences between them.”
The play will feature “excerpts” from Dark Sublime – Mark Gatiss cameos as the voice of the computer – and Dennis says he was keen to capture the essence of the era that birthed Sapphire & Steel and The Tomorrow People.
“British TV at the time was still drawing heavily on the sort of televised theatre tradition, which is an incredibly different aesthetic from the drama we’re used to on television now,” explains Dennis. “It’s incredibly evocative and it reeks of the late-’70s in a way that it doesn’t of any other time.”
Sirtis’s experiences on the Enterprise bridge were clearly different to Marianne’s, but she could see where Dennis was coming from.
“I watched Doctor Who as I kid, so I knew all about the chintzy scenery and the effects,” she laughs. “There was a kind of a style to British sci-fi back then, and through you I’m going to say to Michael, ‘Don’t worry love, I know what you mean!’” RE
Dark Sublime runs at Trafalgar Studios in London from 25 June to 3 August.