Review: I SEE ME & MERYL STREEP, The Other Palace
Meryl is a sixteen (almost seventeen) year old, who has decided that embodying Selena Gomez - ewwww- for her GCSE Drama assessment is just wrong on so many levels. Instead she’s going to showcase her all time idol: Meryl Streep. Who cares if the other kids don’t understand her special interest? Whenever she feels down, she just looks at her knitted pillow and asks ‘what would Meryl do?’
This show has been around since 2015, when it was first performed at The Butterfly Club in Melbourne. It has been performed at various venues across Australia ever since. The current production at The Other Palace marks the show's official London debut.
The set is…thorough. Even before we enter The Other Palace Studio space, we are confronted by a Meryl shrine outside the entrance. There’s feather boas, an entire wall of Meryl movie posters, pillows, a life size cardboard cutout of Meryl and a sign on the door stating ‘ Meryl’s bedroom: you must have 3 Oscars or more to enter’. It’s a bold statement to say the least and it has us wondering what we are in store for in the stage space itself. The answer: unsurprisingly more Meryl Streep!
The set looks very homemade, exactly like what you’d expect from a stereotypical teenage girl’s bedroom, except instead of being covered in boy band posters and memorabilia, its covered in Meryl Streep. This is perfect for setting the audience up to expect a show about a diehard, dedicated fangirl and we have to admit that the attention to detail is impressive.
Alexandra Keddie is a rare talent. She’s a highly accomplished comedian who has flawless comic timing and very clearly understands the importance of joke consistency in addition to well considered joke setups. She is absolutely fearless and fully commits to the role she is portraying. Her characterisation of an obsessive teenage fangirl is hilariously over-exaggerated without looking or feeling unbelievable. Meryl feels familiar and we are sure that we all knew someone like her growing up.
What makes Keddie truly stand out though is her ability to impersonate Meryl Streep’s performances of a wide variety of characters. If it wasn’t for her Mamma Mia! esque costume, her impression of Meryl Streep would be uncanny.. Keddie also has a beautifully melodic singing voice, which almost captures Streep’s voice but doesn’t quite, which is very in keeping with her teenage character and does remind us that we are watching a caricatured teen’s interpretation of Meryl rather than an impersonator's performance.
Not to mention that Keddie expertly brings in an additional comedic element to some potentially quite serious moments through her use of montage to showcase as many of Streep’s roles as possible. However, it must be said that we feel that this element borders on running on for too long, making us aware of how long we’ve been watching the show for, so the performance could be a lot tighter.
That being said, it's worth noting that the show does have a sincere underlying message about the power of fandom and how people are often shamed, misunderstood and bullied for having an intense, all-encompassing interest. It attempts to argue that we should be happy for people who are so passionate and should embrace them, fandom and all. That they aren’t doing any harm by having such an intense love and they don’t deserve the criticism and hate that they get for it.
However, due to the quick pacing of the show, in combination with the densely packed comedic bits and Meryl Streep impressions, this heart of the show gets easily lost and we are left wishing that there was more of this element in the show to make it more full bodied.
Funny and unashamedly committed. By the end of the show, we’ve had a thorough Meryl Streep-ducation.
*** Three stars
Reviewed by: Megan O’Neill
I See Me & Meryl Streep plays at The Other Palace until 4 May, with further info here.
