The Review is In
Rim job tips and Tupperware hookers: Dixie riotously blows away TUTS' family-friendly image
Rimming races? Yes, she went there, took a picture, got the T-shirt and tweeted all about it. Oh. My. Word. I. die.
I am not the kind of chap who blushes at dirty jokes or ribald play on words. In fact, I've inappropriately "opened mouth and inserted foot" on more than one occasion, only to wonder, what the hell I was thinking. But nothing could've prepared me for the run on inventory of double entendres and sexual innuendos that just kept on coming courtesy of one fast-talking southern dame who tells it like it is — and doesn't apologize for it. What you see is what you get.
You have no choice but love on Dixie Longate, the trailer chic gentlewoman hailing from a classy trailer park suburb in Mobile, Ala., who's the star of Dixie's Tupperware Party, presented by Theatre Under the Stars through June 16.
Nothing could've prepared me for the run on inventory of double entendres and sexual innuendos that just kept on coming.
It isn't easy to discern where her real story ends and fiction begins — and what's scripted and what's improv — in this two-hour, one-woman show that gets going when the leading gal pours Jack Daniel's into a no-spill tumbler with a bendy straw. Turn the drinking vessel upside down and . . . the happy liquid stays put, preventing leaks like a tight vagina, Dixie jokes.
The show-and-tell sales demonstration is the real deal, y'all. Audiences members, which she endearingly calls hookers, are encouraged to pore over printed Tupperware catalogs, circle their favorites and purchase them at the end of the non-stop comedy fiasco — cash, checks and credit card accepted.
Tupperware Warning
Tip: Whatever you do, don't call the containers, bowls. Make no mistake about it. These are food storage solutions for the home that carry lifetime warranties. Moreover, some of the products are on display at museums, have earned design awards and are studied in business schools as examples of a successful marketing strategy.
Yet amid the delightfully lewd homily that includes how to perform fellatio, the best way to cook and carry vodka-spiked Jell-O shots and suggestions on keeping that cucumber crisp and firm in the ice box (or next to your bed) — because there's no use for flaccid and slimy cylindrical produce— Dixie's Tupperware Party goes beyond the riotous farce setup to detail a journey of female empowerment from the 1950s to today.
There's substance to the show and depth to this amicable, enterprising lady, who's instantly everyone's friend.
After all, it was a divorcee, Georgia-native Brownie Wise, who first conceived of a domestic, social function (those tupperware parties) as a means to morph from a housewife into a bread winner for her family. The successful entrepreneur became the first woman to be featured on the cover of Business Week when she was hired as the vice president of Tupperware home parties for Stanley Home Products.
A New Hampshire man, Earl Silas Tupper, may be credited with introducing Tupper Plastics to the market in 1946. And sure, it's his patronymic that's now a household name. But the real achievement belongs to Wise.
Longate's story follows along the same line. She earned the title of America's No. 1 Personal Seller of Tupperware because of her uncanny ability to move "plastic crap" after surviving three ex-husbands, who are all deceased, raising three children, Wynona, Dwayne and Absorbine Jr., and doing hard time in the slammer.
What launched as an Ars Nova production in New York presented by the New York International Fringe Festival off Broadway, a work of playwright Kris Andersson and director Patrick Richwood, is causing quite a hoopla in theater circles, earning a Drama Desk Award nomination. With this run, TUTS set in motion a series of more intimate pieces staged at the Hobby Center's smaller theater, the 500-seat Zilkha Hall.
It's a move that broadens the local company's reputation from its current standing as a family-friendly art presenter to one who isn't afraid to walk on the wild side with mature, risqué works.
Dixie's Tupperware Party may seem like its all lucrative naughty fun and drinking games. Plastic bowls plus inebriated women typically equals loads of Tupperware orders. But there's substance to the show and depth to this amicable, enterprising lady, who's instantly everyone's friend, the kind of who's an indispensable addition to an all-night carouse that ends when you pass out next to an aromatic dumpster — and the kind of kindred spirit who uplifts you when you are down in the dumps.
You could say that Dixie Longate is a modern definition of the American dream.
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Theatre Under the Stars presents Dixie's Tupperware Party at the Hobby Center for the Performing Arts through June 16. Tickets start at $24 and can be purchased online or by calling 713-558-8887.
