Cherry Sour and the Tragedy of the Pink Flamingo – Etcetera Theatre, London

Writer and Director: Isabel Quiroz

Jaunty pictures of flamingos and wide pink ribbons decorate the backdrop. There are sparkly clothes and detritus on the stage. A single desk and stool form the play’s only set, furnishing an interrogation cell, lonely bedsit or nightclub. Cherry Sour and the Tragedy of the Pink Flamingo is an intriguing one-woman show, written and directed by Isabel Quiroz. The narrator-protagonist, also played by Quiroz, is a waitress called Cereza, nicknamed Cherry Sour. As the play opens, she has just been arrested for murdering her boyfriend.

The boyfriend in question is Johnny Flamingo (presumably different from the real-life Texan R&B singer of the same name, who died in 2000). The fictional Johnny is a “small-town celebrity” and lead singer of The Pink Flamingos. Songs by this invented glam rock band form the show’s soundscape. They have been recorded by a talented group of musicians: singer Flinn McManus and guitarist Salo Mende with Ricardo Rodriguez on bass and Said Vazquez playing the drums. The lyrics are often biographical and the tunes sometimes familiar.

A committed performance from Quiroz conjures up cockney Johnny, Mexican Cherry, and Cherry’s friend, kind-hearted sex worker Frances. Two pairs of tinted glasses and one pink feathery fan distinguish these three characters. Johnny’s voice is also present as a disembodied recording telling the audience not to take Cherry’s confession of guilt at face value.

The story that unravels has lashings of gore and grit. There are dismembered corpses, spoons and syringes, theft, betrayal, assault, abandonment. A programme note says the play is “based on true stories”, but the script feels strangely clichéd and erratic like a patchwork of crime-drama scenarios. Cherry’s heart-breaking stoicism is almost too flippant and the endless hairpin bends of her push-me-pull-you relationship are disorientating.

There are things to admire. Quiroz embodies her characters with versatile physicality and vocal range. She raises interesting themes like the discomfort of monetising your personal image and life story, the toxic ubiquity of phone cameras (“filming people’s pain”) and the self-referential circus of social media. There are interesting reflections on the role of women. Cherry’s job involves cleaning, serving and entertaining all in one. She later wonders whether 90% of her bad luck is “because I am a woman”.

But ultimately Cherry Sour’s narrative lacks the intimacy of autofiction or the tension of a police procedural. Her rambling tale feels most authentic when she speaks in Spanish. The play was first staged a few years ago in Mexico as Cherry Sour y la Tragedia del Pink Flamingo and feels as though it may have got slightly lost in translation.

Runs until 15 March 2025