Last evening I saw Jen Childs' musical comedy /historical look at the "Worst Act in Vaudeville", the Cherry Sisters of Iowa. The 1812 Productions original musical (book/lyrics by Childs, music by James Sugg) Cherry Bomb was structured in a classic Vaudevillian evening with acts broken up into various genres from burlesque to crooning to juggling act. The pacing of the whole show was swift, making the intermission seem the longest part of the full 2.5 hour evening. Performed at the gorgeous old Plays and Players Theatre on Delancey St. in Philadelphia, Cherry Bomb, while outrageous and slapstick at times, had the subtle undertones of a critique on American entertainment and its fast buck mentality. Impresario Oscar Hammerstein exploited the Cherry Sisters' talentless bravado to improve his box office takes, and Childs, quite insightfully, sees the parallel's to today's American Idol executives, who consistently want to air the awful auditions since these spike the ratings much more than the "legitimate" talent. The question is posed in the lyric at the end of Cherry Bomb's Act I, Good, What is Good, illuminating the theme which intrigued director/writer Childs from the start, why are we entertained by others' humiliation? Brava to Childs and the energetic and talented cast of Cherry Bomb for giving life to the story of the Cherry Sisters and looking not at the spectacle of these women's lack of talent, but bringing heart to their moxie and their humaness.