MEN come and go – but polyethylene storage canisters are forever. So we learn from “Dixie’s Tupperware Party,” off-Broadway’s paean to plastic ware, opening May 10 at Ars Nova.
Part drag show, part nervous breakdown and part sales presentation – those catalogs they hand out aren’t programs, they’re the real deal – it stars Dixie Longate, a slightly cracked Southern belle who finds unusual, usually X-rated uses that Mr. Tupper never dreamed of.
Turn that “cake-taker” upside down, Dixie says, and it holds 34 Jell-O shots. That ribbed (“for your pleasure”), closed-top tumbler?
“If you rear-end the car ahead of you,” Dixie says, “you won’t lose a drop of that martini!”
As for those Forget Me Nots – the little doohickeys that hold half an onion and dangle from your refrigerator shelf – well, that’s for you to find out.
But if you’re curious, Kris Andersson – the man in Dixie’s size 10 pumps – is only too happy to tell you.
Which is how he made $70,000 last year selling what his alter ego fondly calls “my plastic crap.”
“My house is literally the house that Tupperware built,” the 37-year-old actor says of his two-bedroom pad in Los Angeles.
“Friends come over, and the Tuppertini martini glasses come out. In a way, it’s a joke – but on the other hand, it’s given me a great lifestyle!”
Growing up in Pittsburgh, Andersson was no stranger to T-parties (his mom attended plenty), but it wasn’t until he was invited to one 5 ½ years ago in California that he paid any mind.
“It sounded hilarious – but my friend was actually supporting her entire family that way,” he says. “And I thought, what have I got to lose? At least I’ll get free Tupperware.”
Being an actor, he tried several party personas before settling on Dixie – a Donna Reed-ish housewife gone to seed, with a trailer home, three kids and a dream.
Soon Dixie was touting CrystalWave sets, colanders and more throughout Southern California, land of abundant counter space, where people actually have room for 9-by-13-inch cake takers in Caribbean blue.
“There was no intention ever to do to a show like this,” he says, but a director friend suggested otherwise. “Dixie’s Tupperware Party” subsequently played the Fringe festival and Fez before winding up here, complete with a set cluttered in plastic ware – about $40,000 worth, Andersson says, all donated by the company – and a little cart from which theatergoers are urged to buy.
So far, he says, the E-series can-opener (item 1287, $30) is selling pretty well in the city, as are the infamous Forget Me Nots, which do double duty as Dixie’s falsies.
“They’re $12 and can store onions,” Andersson says. “You can’t say that about a breast implant!”