It’s fair to feel frightened when Cherie Gil starts to pull out a fan from the depths of hell, or maybe her bag. The Filipino audience has despised the actress for her countless masterful portrayals of antagonists over the years that they’re predisposed to fill in the sequence: Cherie will whip the fan to its full stretch, lay it flat it on her chest and fan herself in the least efficient but most sinister way possible—all before raising her chin to shoot squinted death stares.
None of that happened at the press conference of Christopher Durang’s theater comedy, Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike, where Cherie plays Masha. When the actress pulled out a sprawling red fan, hell remained intact and what broke loose was laughter—genuine, human laughter. “Shet, ang inet!” she declared in jest, and as it turned out, so did the fan, which had the phrase imprinted on it in white lettering. It was obviously an intended comical stunt, one that gave a glimpse to who Cherie is as a person, and what she can never be onscreen.
The 53-year-old award-winning actress is the daughter of Philippine showbiz veterans Eddie Mesa and Rosemarie Gil, who, in her words, was “ka-mahjongan” of Baby Barredo, the cofounder of Repertory Philippines (Rep) in 1967, along with Bibot Amador. “Rep was the place for actors and we looked up to theater,” Cherie said, adding that the craft has always been her first love, dating back to her early schooldays. “I was about 10 and I wanted to be part of Tita Bibot’s mentorship.”
But theater had to wait when Cherie launched her acting career at the age of 15 in the film Problem Child, starring opposite her mother. Five years after that, she memorably emptied a wine glass on the “second-rate trying hard copycat” played by Sharon Cuneta in Bituing Walang Ningning, and her world was never the same. The moment signaled the arrival of the new star villain in town. In the decades that followed, however, Cherie was often limited to villainous roles of tiger-toothed women marked by opulence.
Then, the actress took a decadelong hiatus from the limelight to focus on her personal life. When the creative itch proved to be too much, she retraced her steps and found herself coming full circle. Rep opened its doors and Cherie’s love for theater was reawakened. It was then when she told Barredo of her early aspirations of joining the latter’s prestigious company. According to Cherie, Barredo replied, “Well it’s time now, hija. I have a perfect role for you!”
“Do a stage turn,” the titanic theater figure asked of the actress. Confused, Cherie obliged nonetheless, but left Barredo baffled. “What kind of turn is that?” “Modeling, tita, modeling!”
It was nothing more than banter and Cherie got the part, playing the baroness in Rep’s 2006 staging of The Sound of Music. “The theater bug bit me again.” From that point on, she made it a point to come up with at least one stage performance a year. Her project list grew longer and her reputation bigger with lauded turns as an opera singer Maria Callas in Master Class, fashion editor Diana Vreeland in Full Gallop and the matriarch Rica Jaradeleza-Sofronio in Arbol de Fuego, an adaptation of Anton Chekhov’s Cherry Orchard.
It’s the flexibility of the roles theater presents her and its intimate audience connection that Cherie loves the most. If she were to be cast in a screen adaptation of Snow White, she’ll be asked to suit up as the Evil Queen nine times out of 10, with the remaining chance having her playing the Magic Mirror, or something as menacing.
But in theater, she gets to dress up as Snow White; play a sister and not just a mother or monster-in-law; or act as the youngest one in a line of siblings. In fact, she gets to do all three as Masha in Durang’s play. The biting piece was awarded as Best Play in the 2013 Tony Awards, and is Rep’s first offering on its 50th year and the opener of its 80th season.
Much like Cherie’s previous play, this piece is once again based on the work of Russian playwright Chekhov. The story tells the tale of three siblings named after the characters of the literary figure, where Vanya (played by Rep veteran actor and director Michael Williams) and Sonia (Philstage Gawad Buhay awardee Rosalyn Perez) live a ho-hum life following the death of their parents in their childhood home in Bucks County, Pennsylvania. That is until their movie star sister Masha (Gil) visits one weekend, toting her boy toy Spike (Joaquin Valdez).
Most of the cast members were coming off dramatic plays and wanted to do comedy for a change. Director Bart Guingona carried the same plight, and when he came across Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike, he was “laughing my head off.”
“Nakakatawa na malalim ang puso,” Guingona said of the play, which opens tonight and will run until February 12 at the OnStage Theater in Greenbelt 1.
“If you look at it at the outset, the premise is a bit shallow, where two people in a house realize they’re lives have past by them, then their sister comes in. But the more you read it, the more you get into it, you see that it’s really complex. It’s so well written.”
Guingona added that despite the play being based on Chekhov, one doesn’t necessarily need to have read the works of the Russian playwright to get the idea of the material. “In fact, after seeing this, you’re going to want to read him.”
The director also believes he has secured his “dream cast” for the play, with each one fully embracing their roles. Guingona said he originally wanted to play as the gay and wistful Vanya (“But I got the part! Ha!” Williams playfully remarked), who he describes is “putting out a forest fire by pissing on it.” But as Williams put it, the Vanya character is really just in “still waters”. “He’s just trying to hold it down until he can’t anymore. Until he explodes into that four-page monologue,” the actor said with a laugh.
Meanwhile, the brawny Valdez describes Spike as the “antithesis of who the siblings are” — a millennial so full of himself and “whose dream in life is to be part of Jersey Shore’s entourage, so that says a lot about him.” The actor added that his role is like a monkey wrench thrown into the equation and messes up the dynamics of the house of the siblings. Also, “for the good part of the show, I’m practically naked, which is why Bart got me.” To which Guingona rode along: “Forget the talent, we need your abs.”
The chemistry is evident among the cast members and as Perez, who portrays the adopted Sonia, said, the rehearsals have been “delicious”. “Sometimes, all I have to do is to look at Cherie’s eyes, and I’m already getting so much from her.”
For her part, Cherie looks forward to suiting up as Masha. She said the role hits close to home. “I play an actress as I am. I can play up my own personal journey and where I am in this point in my life; I’m in the midlife crisis,” she laughed, before turning more serious. “And it’s great to be able to play around that truth and laugh at it, and in that way, it helps me come to terms with that.”
Cherie also points to the chance of working with and learning from her fellow cast members as part of her excitement. It’s the acting process in theater that just catches her fancy, especially when laid in contrast to her familiar world of soaps and films. “I’m just in awe every rehearsals of how they just get right into it.”
And, of course, there’s the opportunity to break out of the casting mold that film and television have encased her in. “At the same time, I get a chance to play opposite the man and touch his body,” Cherie said, referring to Valdez, sending the press-conference crowd in a fit of laughter.
“How often do you get that, right? I’m never cast in soaps with a leading man, because the bitch never gets the man. At least in theater, I can be more versatile and play wonderful roles such as this,” the actress added, before pinching the ripped shoulders of Valdez, who was seated beside her.
Cherie Gil followed it up with a look—not the kind we usually see her onscreen characters knife at the protagonist, but, rather, a frisky smize.