August 23, 2004
It's Alive!
Zombies, opium smokers, and Tupperware ladies, oh my!
By ALEXIS SOLOSKI
The Village Voice
In previous years, the New York International Fringe Festival has often
seemed a repository for either doleful amateurism or slicked-up Urinetown
wannabes. But judging from the 14 plays sampled in the Fringe's opening
days, the theatrical weather appeared sunny despite the downpours outside.
As the festival runs through August 29, the forecast promises at least
another week of well-acted, sweetly idiosyncratic shows.
Dixie Longate, the hostess of the interactive drag-tastic Dixie's Tupperware Party (Plaza Café at Pace), wears her whoredom proudly. While raising three children, disposing of troublesome ex-husbands, and turning the occasional trick, Dixie has established herself as the top Tupperware saleswoman in the U.S. As this was my first Tupperware party, I cannot speak from experience, but I doubt many such soirees include such creative use of storage products as falsies. Nor, I suspect, does the average Tupperware lady refer to her guests so unfailingly as "bitches" and "sluts." (The bitches and sluts in attendance ate this up with a Tupperware spoon.) While mixing herself Amaretto sours, Dixie describes her products in terrifying yet compelling detail. Surely I was not the only one to exit the theater with an unprecedented craving for a popsicle tray?
