It’s a Par-tay. Honestly. Girls and boys get your ticket to Dixie Longate’s riotous, “Dixie’s Tupperware Party,” at the Denver Center Attractions, Garner Galleria theatre.
Not knowing what to expect, I reckon’d I’d laugh, hear profanity and off color jokes about the venerable Tupperware product. Sure enough, I did hear all that…and more.
Dixie Longate is an institution. She’s kind of like Jill Connor Browne’s Sweet Potato Queen and our very own Nuclia Waste. It’s what one might consider high struttin’ and dissin’. But hey, where can you go see an intimate performance, witness a demonstration for airtight plastic storage, toast your neighbor with the special par-tay punch in a vagina tight holder, and best of all, buy a complete set of Tupperware at an honest to god, Tupperware Party, I ask you, where can you do all that?
Dixie is a bonafide starlette. I’ve rarely seen an actor ad lib and improvise as she does. After ten years of selling tupperware, a la Brownie Wise style, it’s safe to say Miss Dixie’s heard it all and answered every question in the book. By the way, Dixie applauds Brownie Wise as the victor of Tupperware products. It was she who took those stacks of plastics into her friend’s living rooms, calling them home parties a la Sara Coventry. Who’da ever thought those plastic bowls would rival costume jewelry, and skyrocket Wise onto the history pages of home parties. She and her friends sold bazilions of forever plastics crowning Tupperware and Brownie the queen of a woman’s can’t-do-with-out-kitchen-items.
At the Galleria, Dixie invites you right into her living room accompanied by the ghost of the hallowed Miss Wise. With gratitude, Dixie smacks her indebtedness for Tupperware which has given her a new life she could never have lived without Mr. Earl Tupper’s invention. After all, before her party skills, she was a single mom, semi-raising three children Wynona, Dwayne and Absorbine, Jr.
The audience sings along with Dixie as she demonstrates her gum chewing wit explaining items such as the nifty pickle keeper. She cracks with well informed knowledge, “You simply lift out the strainer and grab a liquid free pickle – from the #443,” wickedly adding, “so your fingers won’t smell like ass, when you’re done.” Then there’s the #1289, Can Opener. Dixie swears that after the nuclear war there’ll be three things left on this earth: Cher, cockroaches and the #1289 can opener. She’s knows things like that. She knows that things come into focus better after that second shot of tequilla and she’s forever grateful for Brownie & Earl, “There ain’t a day that goes by that I don’t pick up a piece of Tupperware and thank my lucky stars at how much better off I am now than I was just a couple of years ago.”
Stuttering, laughing, gum chewing, drinking wine, poking fun, engaging innocent audience participants is the uncut version of a top rated fun evening. The dialogue is clever and naughty and Dixie is without a doubt one of the funniest character actors on the stage today.
Don’t be surprised. You’ll actually love the new tupperware and by golly, it is quality stuff, still. Everyone gets a catalog and order form at your seat. You will quickly recognize the changes over the years. The lettuce crisper was a standard for all new wives in the 50’s -70’s, now costs a whopping $59.00. Crisp or not, lettuce can’t last long enough to pay for that piece of plastic. But if you listen to Dixie, you’ll be buying the berry colored tumbler set, the meat tenderizer, and airtight bowls our mothers swore by.
In fact, I bought the party punch in a Berry Bliss tumbler and by golly, not a drop of sweat on the outside and, the ice was perfect at the end of the evening.
Dixie’s Tupperware Party is the real thing.
denverartmatters.com 