“That freedom children have”: Meryl Streep’s trippy turn on stage in 1979’s ‘Alice in Concert’
For generations, stoners across the world have been trying to find the perfect pieces of music or visual media to help them transcend into another realm of consciousness, having consumed a joint and raided the freezer for food. The music and movies of The Beatles certainly played a part throughout the late 20th century, as did the Wachowski sisters’ Matrix at the turn of the new millennium, but the common theme between not just these two but all hypnotic trips was the original psychedelic wonder, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.
Penned by Lewis Carroll back in 1865, the children’s tale was a phantasmagorical dream of strange creatures and bizarre situations, with the titular girl falling through a rabbit hole in the real world, which takes her to a land where nothing makes sense and nonsense is king. An iconic tale that speaks to the importance of retaining your childhood self during the whirlwind of adolescence, Carroll’s tale has since been retold countless times on stage and screen.
Everyone’s heard and probably seen Disney’s animated version of 1951, and lovers of arthouse cinema may have also seen Jan Švankmajer’s weird 1988 live-action adaptation. Still, few will know of the time that the three-time Oscar winner Meryl Streep appeared on stage as the titular adventurer.
The year was 1979, and Streep had just made herself known in the world of Hollywood, earning an Oscar nomination for only her second-ever feature film role in Michael Cimino’s Deer Hunter. An up-and-coming star, Streep had planned collaborations with the likes of Woody Allen, Robert Benton, and Jerry Schatzberg. However, she still found time to appear on the stage, taking a leading role in Alice in Concert, a musical version of Carroll’s surreal tale.
An experimental take on the story, directed by Joseph Papp and composed by Elizabeth Swados, the show was a true oddity of late-1970s experimental surrealism. Playing a character many decades her junior, Streep’s performance is an ode to her sheer versatility, clearly loving the opportunity to act as if she was a child on stage mere months after her emotionally wrought role in The Deer Hunter.
“I had just done three movies, and I needed to jump and leap and feel the way I see my little boy play,” Streep told Rolling Stone, reflecting on her experience in the play. Continuing, she explained: “I wanted to forget the way I look, to become un-self-conscious, to have that freedom children have when they’re doing something in the middle of a room full of adults looking at them – and they just totally don’t care. Sure, maybe I can go to an analyst to try not to be self-conscious, but it never occurred to me to do that.”
The result is one of Streep’s most curious roles that is admirable and brave, even if it probably wouldn’t win her any acting awards. Still, it takes quite the performer to be able to pull off such bizarre language as that heard in Papp’s musical adaptation of Carroll’s book, and there are few people who could deliver the lines with as much vigour as Streep.
Revisit Streep on stage as the titular role in Alice in Concert below.