Dixie’s Tupperware Party Brings Wild and Crazy Southern Schtick to the Kennedy Center
Yes, Dixie Longate is a real person who has been selling Tupperware for 22 years. I need to put that out there because initially I was unsure if what I was seeing was a person or a character – definitely a bit of both. Ms. Dixie has won countless sales awards in no small part due to her outrageously hilarious and super salty brand of humor and earnestly flippant pep talks. To join her party be prepared to be charmed, included (parts are interactive) and doubled over with laughter. Dixie is the best friend and soulmate you were not entirely sure you needed, but how on earth did you reach adulthood without her detailed instructions on relationships? Her prescription (maybe I should call it “The Gospel According to Dixie”) for a successful life offers tough love, Tupperware and sex advice – all delivered tongue-in-cheek.
Strutting the stage in ruby red high heels and tossing out advice like tabs from a Pez dispenser, this Mobile, Alabama gal chides the audience while doling out her own life story. In her saucy red gingham dress with candy cane striped skirt festooned with bows and topped ever so sweetly with a retro cherry-print apron, this feisty six-foot plus gal doles out platitudes and life lessons the audience laps up like kittens to a bowl of sweet milk. How can you not love a gal sporting a bouffant hairdo that’s as close to God as a rattail comb can achieve? For some reason I began to desperately crave a cherry Coke, fried green tomatoes and a Moon Pie.
If you don’t get the vapors from her non-stop, double entendre repartee, you’ll learn a lot about how Tupperware relates to Life as she regales you with stories of prison and her trailer park background before she found her muse, Brownie Wise, the housewife founder of Tupperware in-home parties who changed the world of business for women everywhere. That part is true. As Dixie tells it, “I have three kids – Wynona, Dwayne and Absorbine, Jr. and 3 ex-husbands. All of ‘em have somehow died, but I ain’t crying about it. I’m way too busy traveling all over the place bringing creative food storage solutions to your town.”
Dixie loves her gays and they love her back. She calls them her “homosectionals” – the rest of us are lovingly referred to as “hookers” – and likes to challenge the audience to interactive games, bringing a select few onstage while dispensing Southern schtick. There were moments when I was entirely prepared to see Baltimore filmmaker John Waters pop out from behind the curtain with the late actor Divine. Ah, well, Miss Dixie is a truly pretty Southern gal – just don’t tell John I said that.
Be sure to see Dixie in her wild and crazy Tupperware World. It’s tons of fun!
By Kris Andersson; Directed by Patrick Richwood; with Lighting Design by Richard Winkler and Sound Design by Christopher K. Bond.
Through June 2 at The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in the Family Theatre, 2700 F Street, NW, Washington, DC 20566. For tickets and information call the box office at 202 467-4600 or visit Kennedy-Center.org.
