Ask Meryl Streep to play-act for the camera and the result is pristine professionalism, icy exactitude and a self-possession that veers on the eerie. Ask her to collect an award and you get the polar opposite: a rumble-tumble Feydeau farce. At Sunday night's Baftas, the Iron Lady star bounded on stage with such devil-may-care exuberance that she lost her shoe en route.
"Well, that couldn't have gone worse," Streep chortled, having clearly forgotten her appearance at last month's Golden Globes. On that occasion she rocked up without her spectacles, shouted "Oh shit, my glasses!" and thereby triggered the telecast's seven-second time delay (the broadcaster's equivalent of the red button, or the ejector seat). All of which leaves the pundits wondering what Streep has in store for Oscar night. Perhaps she will overturn a table, or become ankle-cuffed by her underpants in her sprint to the stage. Perhaps she will drop the Oscar on Harvey Weinstein's head.
Once, long ago, award ceremonies were rather unruly and rambunctious affairs. Marlon Brando sent a Native American activist to reject his Oscar for The Godfather. Vanessa Redgrave used her acceptance speech to rail against "militant Zionist hoodlums" and David Niven ad-libbed beautifully when a male streaker dashed by him at the podium. These days, by contrast, these events are rigorously policed and stage-managed to within an inch of their lives. This year's Baftas played out like morphine through a drip.
So thank heaven for Streep, with her flying shoe and mislaid specs; her off-piste outbursts and scatty good humour. Undeniably, she gave a fine performance in The Iron Lady. And yet her ongoing tour-de-force on the awards circuit – playing the dotty aunt, the agent of chaos – is at least its equal. Streep is electrifying, she's turbulent; you can't take your eyes off her. Maybe she should get an award or something.
