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Here comes a nice interview by the Washington Post. Meryl Streep sings. Her fans know this. Meryl Streep sang in “Postcards From the Edge,” in “Ironweed,” on the children’s album “Philadelphia Chickens” and, of course, in “Mamma Mia,” the movie that improbably, given all the successes in her career, made her a box-office star. That Meryl Streep can sing Sondheim is something that music-theater aficionados are likely to question — until, at least, they’ve heard it. Streep, as film and theater fans are well aware by now, plays the Witch in the new Rob Marshall film of Stephen Sondheim’s “Into the Woods.” Like most big Sondheim roles, it requires a certain level of vocal ability. Streep’s singing voice is recognizably her own; it’s also credible and moving, and it allows her, when called for, to chew the scenery in the best musical-theater tradition. “I had to expand my chest and be able to hold a tone longer than I’ve tried to do in 15 years,” Streep said, laughing, sitting at a round, white-draped table in a large empty room at the Waldorf Astoria in New York, which Disney colonized, shortly before Thanksgiving, for its “Into the Woods” media blitz. The complete interview can be read over at the Washington Post. One quote needs a special spotlight, as Meryl confirms and talks about the upcoming “Florence Foster Jenkins” biopic:
If you listen to those recordings, she was almost good, and then there was a point when she was off. And that is what makes it funny. It was almost there. It doesn’t start out badly. It starts out hopefully. I think I’m going to try to be as good as I can, and then — we’ll see.
