With skilled impressions and quality singing, Keddie performs an excellent Meryl Streep, but the storyline lacks the power to fully grip an audience.
As a self- proclaimed Meryl Streep fanatic, actor and comedian Alexandra Keddie used skilled impressions to bring Meryl Streep to life in her show I See Me & Meryl Streep, but as she states at the end of the show, it may be that there is such a thing as too much Meryl Streep. Having only seen some of Streep’s later films, I was intrigued to see a show about a Meryl-obsessed teenager, amusingly also called Meryl, to see if it resonated with a wider audience than simply Streep’s biggest fans. Alongside this, was an endearing exploration of the awkwardness of teenage years and the difficulty of fitting in with your peers when yours interests stand out.
The premise of the show was set up in the bedroom of the character Meryl capturing innocence and a fanatic obsession with Meryl Streep. Ranging from a Meryl Streep bedspread to a homemade knitted what would Meryl do sign, the staging did plenty to showcase the essence of the show. In addition, the comedic tool of the Meryl Mountain, a whiteboard which Keddie moved herself up and down on a scale of zero to Meryl Streep, was amusingly used.
The start of the show was somewhat rushed, as it would be for any teenage theatre production, but it resulted in the audience not being fully connected with the storyline. The idea was that Keddie’s character was performing a GCSE drama piece, but without explanation about what the intent was of the piece and where it was going, it was hard to follow when she launched into a series of Meryl Streep impressions and songs. It may be that this was the point of the exercise, to reinforce that the character was a true obsessive, but a lot of the time I ended up feeling lost without a proper thread to connect me to the main character.
In the middle of the show, Keddie went into a long series of impressions from Meryl Streep films, with rushed costume changes between each. Again this was amusing in the first instance, despite not having seen the films, but as it went on you could feel a number of the audience were being lost by the overworked tropes and I would be tempted to reduce the number of impressions one after the other.
Alongside the impressions, Keddie performed a number of songs with aplomb. The characterisation of each song in line with the different films or plays she was impersonating was very impressive whilst also showcasing her talented vocals. Although the singing was highly skilled, there were again moments where it felt divorced from the storyline. It may be that this was also a tool of the awkward teenage performance, but without the full audience buy-in at the start, the energy in the room often didn’t match the song that ensued.
The interaction between Keddie and her two support actors, her “cousin” and “sister” was well done, capturing the delicate and sometimes awkward relationship of those teenage years. The sweet ending between the two sisters was endearing to Keddie’s character as well as the sister, however, again it felt a little too rushed a conclusion and could have been more powerfully emotive if further explored.
Whilst the premise of the show was a vehicle for showcasing an exploration of impressions and singing, I felt that more could have been done with the storyline to create the heartfelt response from the audience that was potentially intended. With the storyline as it was, the audience was left feeling a bit lost to start with and slightly unsatisfied at the end. If you are a big Meryl Streep fan, I would definitely recommend this show for the impressions, but with only two or three films under my belt I needed a more effective plot structure to get the most out of this show.