They were real -- those five corn-fed Cherry Sisters -- and they were really (apparently unknowingly) awful as a popular late 1800s vaudeville act that people went to see to yell insults and throw fruits, vegetables and whatever they could hurl.
Playwright Dan O'Brien in his The Cherry Sisters Revisited, the seventh and final full-length play in the 34th annual Humana Festival of New American Plays at Actors Theater of Louisville, set himself a difficult task in bringing to life those poor deluded untalented creatures.
He's fortunate that the work, directed by Andrew Leynse, is in the hands of such skillful actresses--particularly Renata Friedman as youngest sister Effie, the brains behind the enterprise that took them from their Marion, Iowa, barn to top billing in New York City -- and matchless John Hickok playing their drunken widower father and their devious manager.
Effie is the morose yet hard-driving dreamer, Lizzie (Kate Gersten) is the pretty one, Ella (Cassie Beck) is the mentally challenged one who doesn't stay the course, Addie (Katie Kreisler) is the tough one who plays males in the inane sketches, and Jessie (Broadway veteran Donna Lynne Champlin) is the warm eldest and the mother figure whose stage contribution is declaiming a "homily."
In real life all the women were deemed ugly and hopeless as performers. The New York Times called them "Four Freaks From Iowa" and said their act was "more pitiable than amusing." An Iowa newspaper wrote that "the mouths of their rancid features opened like caverns, and sounds like the wailing of damned souls issued therefrom "
Putting forward such oblivious and uninspiring losers for our consideration, O'Brien risks forfeiting audience interest. We don't throw things at the stage (for their own safety, the Cherries eventually performed behind a wire mesh curtain). But we can walk out or not return after intermission (as some did at the opening).
Yet schadenfreude also comes into play. Some say the only thing people love more than success is failure. That may be a byproduct of our culture's strange belief that anyone nowadays can become famous -- for 15 minutes or more. So we await the far more satisfying second act to see how the house of cards collapses.
There's poignancy here as some sisters die and only Addie and determined Effie are left to tour, singing as a duet what was Lizzie's "I Ain't Never Been Kissed" song. Then Addie dies and ghostlike Effie settles in Cedar Rapids, opens a bakery selling cherry treats, and runs and loses twice for public office.
Songs composed by Michael Friedman evoke the period feeling, such as in a corny Hawaiian grass skirt number performed by Champlin. But "Life's Like Money," written and sung by Effie when only she and Addie are left, is a great advance over the others with its bitter Kurt Weill/Bertolt Brecht feeling.
The Cherry Sisters may not have been great artists, but they unwittingly did a great service to freedom of expression when they sued Iowa newspapers for negative reviews they called "false and malicious libel." The newspapers won in "Cherry v. Des Moines Leader," a landmark decision that confirms the right to fair comment and criticism in the press.
