Review: I See Me & Meryl Streep (The Other Palace Studio)

Review by Harry Bower

⭐️⭐️⭐️

It takes less than five minutes watching Australian actor and comedian Alexandra Keddie on stage to realise you’re watching a star - and that’s not just because she’s delivering a fake Oscars acceptance speech. Playing a dramatised caricature of her fifteen year old self preparing for a GCSE drama performance about the life of Meryl Streep, Keddie (whose character name is also Meryl) is full of electric energy, bouncing around the stage like a preteen who just discovered an unattended stash of sugar.

Supported by her ‘mum’ on lights, ‘sister’ on piano, and ‘cousin’ as stagehand, ‘Meryl’ walks us through the obsession she has with her namesake, reciting monologues from films, performing Streep-related songs, playing us clips from Award-winning turns, and throwing on an outfit a minute to keep the attempted machine gun of laughter firing. She does it all with a lifesize cardboard cutout of the real Streep unnervingly watching from over her shoulder.

The zany lurch from one iconic scene to another is peppered with insight about the three-time Academy Award winner’s personal life, loose context relating to the life of the character Meryl, and some very well-earned throwaway lines. It’s an hour of violently energetic entertainment which at times verges on clowning but levels out somewhere between heartwarming drama and cabaret stand up set.

At sixty minutes, it’s the near-perfect run time for a piece like this. Sadly, the sheer detail in the seventy-five-year life of our hero means some of the context is lost and the references, while mostly funny and mainstream enough for most in the room of a certain age to understand them, often fall into the ultra-niche category. Yes, you attend this show expecting to hear about the work of Meryl Streep. But there’s niche, and then there’s niche. I did find myself scratching my head at times, wondering why a certain thing is referenced other than for reference’s sake. 

I See Me & Meryl Streep is an Australian import. By Keddie’s own admission, the show has been adapted for London audiences. Judging by the number of place names and cultural references there has been a lot of work done here to ensure us Brits understand the Aussies get us. While admirable, it’s difficult not to see this as anything other than trying too hard to be relatable. That might seem like an odd criticism, but for a show which is so fundamentally stubborn about not adjusting its tone and content to be relatable (can anyone in that room honestly say they’d heard all of the Streep references before?) it feels as though the anglicised references have been shoehorned and unnecessarily dumb everything down a bit. 

Sharing the stage throughout and, occasionally, stealing the spotlight, is ‘sister’ Charlotte MacInnes. Brilliantly deadpan but with a reluctant sisterly defensiveness and protection about her, she plays the perfect antidote to Keddie’s ball of energy, and nails her comic timing with every line. Special mention for the direction and operation by Monique Salle operating the show too. Getting things intentionally wrong isn’t as easy as it might appear on the night, and there was a fine line expertly towed here.

Ultimately, this is not a piece about Meryl Streep. Rather, it is - but it’s more about the idea of obsession, of passionate hyperfixation. Using an intense interest as an escape for anything or everything else going on in your life which is of a challenging or uninspiring nature. It’s a piece that rallies against the sense that anyone with a passionate interest is somehow weird or abnormal. In a world which is increasingly full of conflict, disagreement and unsavoury news, escapism should absolutely be encouraged - and ISMAMS does that in spades. Its message is - “hey you, it’s okay to do what makes you happy, and screw everyone else who might think otherwise or judge you for it”. 

On character Meryl’s wall is a ‘Meryl mountain’, a graph which tracks her progress to becoming the perfect Meryl. We never see character Meryl reach the summit, something which is symbolically important and reminds the audience as they leave the auditorium that aspiring to be someone else is counterproductive when the original you is just fantastic as the person you’re trying to emulate. Although it feels some of the tone might be lost in translation, that’s a pretty great message! 

I See Me & Meryl Streep plays at The Other Palace until 4th May. Tickets from: https://theotherpalace.co.uk/i-see-me-and-meryl-streep/