No words will ever live up to the bogan royalty, high-cut leotard, grotesque stop-motion 90s nostalgia, fur two-piece, prawn barbie, stereo-sonic, Lindy Chamberlain alternate reality that Ruby Teys serves up in Cherry Vinyl: Coober Pedy’s Last Showgirl. In place of all-out worship, this review is merely an attempt to reflect on the already cult-classic fever dream that is the plight of Cherry Vinyl. 

From the outset, we are flung into Cherry’s potent, maiden showgirl voyage - flying the coop of Coober Pedy and crash-landing in ritzy Surfer’s Paradise. For Cherry, 1993 isn’t all lips and legs. It’s Lips, Lips, Lips! and Legs, Legs, Legs! Her spray-tan aspirations are stiletto-high as she claws her way through some sort of bogan “Geurnica” scene that even Picasso couldn’t have imagined: the life of a blonde mole showgirl, four pingas deep on a Wednesday night, wearing a prawn-adorned bodystocking in a seedy club with a shonky stage. 

Manifesting a world decorated by pearls, feathers, a citrus matriarch and coconut-tinged possum piss, Teys masterfully hurls us into Cherry’s orbit like a high-voltage, not-safe-for-work episode of “Round The Twist”, or the future of Epponnee-Rae Craig that never graced our screens. 

Cherry Vinyl is exhilaratingly whimsical yet equally vulnerable, and we hang off her every word. Amidst the throes of supercharged fantasy, Teys expertly highlights the humanity in it all - the story of a young woman who came from less but hopes for more. So, as those fateful Born Slippy chords began to play, the jolt back into mundane reality felt all too soon. Although it was late on a school night, we - the disciples of Cherry Vinyl - couldn’t bear to leave. And in a society that would rather kick community in the teeth than witness a genuine collective experience, I guess that’s the power of spray-tan and a dream.