Irish playwright Martin McDonagh’s newest play, “A Behanding in Spokane” is his first set in America. It’s still one of his characteristic black comedies – a label that means it okay to laugh at others’ pain and suffering – but it comes across the pond and centers on a one-handed man. The sweaty-headed Carmichael lost his hand to a bunch of hillbillies in Spokane, Washington, and he’s been searching for it for the past 27 years. The hillbillies he long ago found and disposed of, but his hand still eludes him. Profile’s production of the play, similarly, seems to be searching for something; it has many of the essential parts – a smart head and occasional heart – but it’s missing something I can’t quite put my finger on.

 The unfinished business of Carmichael (broodingly played by Darell W. Cox) brings him to a decrepit hotel for a promised transaction. An enterprising young couple (Levenix Riddle and Sara Greenfield tell Carmichael they have his hand, but they underestimate his intolerance for trickery and his capacity for violence. The hand-off plays out in real-time, with the young couple disagreeing on the con and ending up playing a twisted carnival game for their lives – tossing severed hands at a candle that is burning down to a bucket of gasoline. Caught in the middle is a delightfully naïve, but still flawed, receptionist, given a playful characterization by Eric Burgher.

At its core, A Behanding in Spokane is about justice and how it plays out between these four individuals – a man seeking revenge disregards the law, a young couple unethically try to swindle him, and a receptionist serves as an accidental judge with his own grievances. In the plot-heavy piece, McDonagh digs into how a grudge can consume and destroy a life, leaving it more mangled and blackened than a 27-year-old severed hand. But from a man obsessed with location (his play titles almost always include a geography: The Beauty Queen of Leenane, A Skull in Connemara, The Cripple of Inishmaan, The Lieutenant of Inishmore, The Banshees of Inisheer), the placement of the play in America is not accidental. In his black comedy, he features a black character (the young Toby) and satirizes political correctness and confronts America’s racist past. Toby’s girlfriend Marilyn reprimands her captor, while he wields a gun, for his homophobia and use of racial epithets.  Her boyfriend is a bit more practical about the situation.  In short, he doesn’t mind being called a name if it means he doesn’t get murdered.

The relationship between this pair is what makes the piece lose its early momentum. Once Carmichael leaves the pair alone, the piece dips in intensity, focusing on the yelling of two young folks. Their screams and banter become a bit monotonous, although I/m not sure exactly I would react in the face of impending death. The layout of the Profiles Theatre storefront puts the audience close to the actors and on both sides of the stage. The effect is Brechtian – you’re never lost in the dream of a story, you’re constantly aware that the other half of the audience– and intimate – you’re close to the characters, which can be frightening with a villain like Carmichael or disappointing when a moment isn’t properly directed.

McDonagh’s repetitive dialogue, rhythmically perfected by a talented cast of 4, is a strong source of humor, but occasionally Snyder has directed his cast toward pathos rather than the laughs the author intended. In the face of such dark and tragic comedy, sometimes the only response is laughter – aided by the fact that these are fictional characters in an imagined situation. Even still, McDonagh’s impression of the United States are as dark as his comedy – we’re a violent, homophobic, racist people that have overcorrected by becoming PC and sensitive to the point of nonsense. How far off is his assessment? I had never heard of Spokane, Washington until McDonagh’s play, but I recently received an e-mail which referenced the city three times. In a list of recent LGBT hate crimes were the following:

- September 21, 2011: Steve Pfefferle, 38, was choked with a rope and repeatedly struck with a piece of metal by a man in Spokane, Washington after leaving Dempsey’s, a local gay bar.

- September 28, 2011: Michael Jepsen, 45, was hit, pushed, and called a “faggot” by a group of people outside Irv’s, a bar in Spokane, Washington.

- October 7, 2011: Danny Hawkins, a gay rights advocate, was asked if he was gay before being beaten by an unnamed man in Spokane, Washington after leaving a local gay bar.

And that’s nothing to laugh about.

Abstract impressionist painter Mark Rothko is an asshole. Or at least, playwright John Logan thinks so. In his Tony-award winning play Red, currently enjoying a beautiful, if less than perfect, production at the Goodman Theatre, Rothko is a wide-bellied, self-centered rock of a man who treats his art better than his fellow human beings. He employs the youthful Ken, a fictional character, as a personal slave, calling him overeager, undereducated, and consistently wrong. Yet, for some reason, Rothko keeps him around.

Commissioned to create nine murals for the Four Seasons restaurant in New York, Rothko sets to work with his assistant. They argue about money, fame, art, history, and philosophy, but when they work, it is in silence. They take to the white canvas with raw speed, criss-crossing one another in a choreographed dance to lay a reddened brown base on the bare canvas. They finish. His assistant falls to his back to catch his breath. Rothko lights up a cigarette. Despite this visual joke, the pair never displays any sexual tension; it is a strict employer-employee bond, even though the assistant longs for Rothko to be more of father.

“To me the play is really not about art or painting at all,” Logan remarked in an interview, “it's about fathers and sons." That central relationship is brought to life by two talented men, who, like their characters, are at different ends of their careers. Edward Gero, who has spent 28 seasons with the Shakespeare Theatre Company, takes to the lofty, poetic of language of Rothko with ease. His high, wide pants, splattered with paint, cover the booming presence of a know-it-all painter who gets angry when others don’t. His counterpart, the tiny and attractive Patrick Andrews, is a bit shyer and occasionally seems too aware that his words have been poetically scripted by another. While this fictional relationship is the heart of the play, the true-life story of Rothko and the commission frame the work.

Disgusted by the clientele and prices of the Four Seasons, Rothko eventually revokes his work and returns the commission stipend. In a dramatic exchange between the pair, Rothko wonders why he took it to begin with. Prestige has clouded his judgment. Logan, who penned the screenplays for The Aviator, Gladiator, and first encountered a Rothko while in London filming Sweeney Todd, is no stranger to this tension between art and money. One must recognize art does not exist in a vacuum, but is instead created by individuals with human needs that must function in economic systems. Rothko knows this, and speaks lyrically about his struggle over a brilliantly designed score. Richard Woodbury’s original music, which appears during scene changes, combines with Logan’s language to raise the play to a place of poetry. Set designer Todd Rosenthal’s tall studio, littered with cans of paint and pigment, provides a space grand enough for Rothko to contemplate and create his works – and to contain his ego. The design elements unite to create a space of slightly heightened realism, pulsing like reds in Rothko’s work.

Close up, there are moments in Red which haunt– the fast painting scene, Rothko asking, “How do they make you feel?” as Ken stares looks at the audience imagining a wall of work - but when one stands back and shines a bright white light on the production, it has shortcomings. It can feel like a collection of moments which don’t quite build on one another brought to life by a pair of men who don’t quite have a powerful on-stage chemistry. But like a Rothko painting, Red should not be experienced from far away in bright white light, but close-up in a dimmed theater, allowing for gentle, subtle contemplation.

Red plays at the Goodman Theatre through October 30. More information at goodmantheatre.org.

It’s 1959 and the house at 406 Clybourne Street boasts stained wooden columns, vaulted ceilings, three floors, and an attic full of memories. That’s precisely why Russ and Bev are leaving. Haunted by an upstairs incident and their neighbours' subsequent shunning, the middle-aged, middle-class couple have sold their home to escape northward. The neighborhood association is worried – not because they’ll miss Russ at Rotary or seeing Bev at the grocery store, but because the new tenants are black.

The issues of race and place take up residence in playwright-provocateur Bruce Norris’ newest dramatic comedy Clybourne Park, winner of this year’s Pulitzer Prize and the Steppenwolf season opener. In Act One of Amy Morton’s deftly staged production, the threat of plunging property values and white flight play out, while Act Two fast forwards 50 years to see the same home, now in a predominantly black neighborhood, being sold to white yuppies as gentrification begins. Two September afternoons, a half-century apart, reveal deep-seeded racism playing out during property negotiations. The play is also quite funny.

Karl Lindner, a man so slick his glasses slide off his face, arrives with his pregnant, deaf wife, to urge Russ not to sell. He’s just come from trying to convince the future tenants, the black Youngers family from Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun, to not move into the neighborhood. Lindner is the closest thing Norris offers to a villain. Writing on him and his deaf wife, Norris remarks, “I wanted to make the point that nobody who could hear Karl Lindner would marry him.” But Russ, who can hear, won’t listen to Lindner either. He isn’t fighting for social justice and racial equality, he’s just sending a final fuck-you to the neighbors he once called friends.

“Fuck you” might be a crass way of describing how Norris treats the audiences of his plays. Seeing society as a depraved, dead mass, Norris derives joy from denying spectators a relatable, moral character. “I think art is to society as Christmas ornaments are to a tree,” Norris told the A.V. Club. “They make the tree prettier, but it’s still a dead tree.” This attitude has gotten the former actor work. A Chicagoan of 19 years who now calls Brooklyn home, Norris has had six of his plays originated at Steppenwolf, including last season’s time-bending musing on upper-class discount A Parallelogram. His acting background, which includes stints on Broadway and feature films, heavily influences his writing method. He tells SFGate.com that “writing plays is just an elaborate form of improvisation in which I act out all of the characters in my head and simultaneously transcribe what they say.” The result in Clybourne Park is a carefully crafted collection of fourteen characters, embodied by a talented ensemble of seven performers.

Each actor plays a different character in the two time periods, demonstrating considerable range and creating thought-provoking parallels. Kirsten Fitzgerald transforms from her positive, plump Bev into a self-centered real-estate agent; John Judd switches from his brooding volcano Russ into a soft-spoken contractor; Cliff Chamberlain swaps from his sly Lindner to half of the yuppie pair about to demolish the graffiti-stained property and build their McMansion. These juxtapositions elevate the whole play, making it greater than the sum of the acts. Mundane specifics (“Monday”, “4pm”) are kept constant, as well as profound mantras: “you can’t live in a principle – you live in a house.”  In these parallels, Norris suggests that while progress has certainly been made (the black maid and her husband, silent for much of the first act, are upper-class owners of the property after intermission); true integration is still far off. Our contemporary “euphemistic tapdance” around race, as one character calls us, keeps us trapped from addressing deeper issues. But perhaps Norris’ play, a perfectly structured memory of yesterday and stark staging of today, will keep us from reverting back to the tragedies that hang in our attics.  Also, maybe we can learn to laugh at ourselves.

David Henry Hwang, a small Asian American who wears a wide smile and a baggy suit, is not physically intimidating; but his newest play, Chinglish, reveals him as a towering and accomplished playwright well-versed in the conventions of film and theater, with a sharp wit and compassionate heart. Best known for his 1988 Tony-award winning M. Butterly, a comedy inspired by an American’s mistaken love affair with a Chinese woman who is actually a man, Hwang tackles a similar clash of cultures in the Goodman Theatre’s world premier of Chinglish, focusing not on gender, but on language.

Daniel Cavanaugh, a delightfully ignorant American businessman humorously played by the lanky, high-pitched James Waterston, arrives in the small town of Guiyang, China (only 3 million people) to offer his sign translating services to the government. His financial motives in travelling to China are far from the Orientalism of much of the twentieth century, which exoticized the “East” into an other-worldly wonderland. Now, China is a powerful market where business people come to capitalize.

In this world of business, cultures clash as Daniel must understand not only a different language but a different way of doing business with allegiances and responsibilities. Employed translators, with projected subtitles appearing above their heads, occasionally miss the mark completely, but also frequently reveal another character’s subtext. Mistranslating lends itself to humor, frustration, and poignant dramatic moments that speak to a frustrating inability to cross-communicate. When Daniel isn’t conducting business, he finds himself getting busy with a Chinese woman, powerfully played by Jennifer Lim. Devotion, marriage, and intimacy are explored as they are reflected through the prisms of American and Chinese ideals. Of course, hot passionate sex tends to transcends translation.

These romantic encounters take place on a dual rotating set facilitates, which lends a cinematic quality to the piece as characters travel through hotel lobbies to hotel rooms energized by the pulsing beats of contemporary Chinese pop music. Impressive at first, these twists and turns become a bit burdensome during the fifteen or sixteenth round-a-bout. Along with set twists are plot twists, perhaps one too many, that continue throughout the piece. Heavy plot means heavy dialogue, and moments of silence are rare. But when they do appear, we hear the understanding that can exists when we stop yelling and just exists with another.

Language, that mysterious way we communicate by making noises with our mouths and scribbling shapes on a sheet of paper, is a curious thing. Biological urges and cultural thoughts spontaneously arise in us, and we must translate them into words so we can share them with someone else. Translating between two different languages is, at some level, a blown-up version of the inherently human task of translating individual experience into a shareable, understanding social observation. Chinglish reminds us that perfect translations don’t exists for words between cultures, just as perfect translations don’t exists for experiences between people.

The only proper response to a Will Eno play is suicide. The existentialist, Brooklyn-based playwright enjoys holding a mirror up to his audiences so they can watch themselves slowly die. He is also very funny. The 46-year old, whose Thomas Pain (based on nothing) was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Drama back in 2005 has penned an equally engaging piece that explores life and death, humans and animals, space and time, and everything in between. Middletown, a darkly humorous play first produced at the Vineyard Theater in New York last November, is taking up residence at Steppenwolf as the last play of their season devoted to exploring public/private lives.

Two windows in two houses stand on opposite sides of a circular median where the residents revolve like planets around the sun, living humdrum lives that are simultaneously boring and profound. Mary Swanson, the newest Middletownian, lives in the left with her distant and never-seen husband; John Dodge, a graying lifer in the town, lives on the right. They meet in the middle, and their odd, hesitant friendship forms the central relationship of the piece. Facilitated by the Librarian (played regally by Artistic Director Martha Levy), their bond anchors of the show, as a Cop, Mechanic, and Astronaut wax philosophical about existence. The result is a powerful thought piece, poetically written and masterfully acted by some of the most talented performers in Chicago.

 The characters, despite divergent professions and stages of life, all speak as Eno. For that reason, Eno is at his strongest when his characters speak directly to us. From the first monologue which brilliantly invites and alienates each audience member to the speeches scattered throughout where characters welcome and warn us about their home, Eno’s poetic and tragic chunks of language are powerful. Michael Patrick Thorton, who plays the the mechanic philosopher in a wheelchair, provides the bulk of this deadpan that kills – with both laughter and true, biting pain. Tracy Letts, fresh off his groundbreaking and Broadway-bound performance as George in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf, storms the stage as the weathered George. While Brenda Barie, the female lead, seemed a bit nervous at her Equity debut, no one can fault her while playing opposite the Tony Award winning playwright and performance.

Middletown isn’t just a staged suicide note, but a twisted love letter. While painfully aware of his characters’ and his own death, Eno celebrates these individual’s lives and the loose connections we make on our sojourn to the grave. His language walks the fine line between comedy and tragedy, suggesting everything worthwhile is in between. Don’t give your attention to the individual, but to the untouchable and empty middle that floats between us all.

A play-within-a-play requires double duty for a reviewer.  “One Last Kiss,” the play-within-the-play in this theatrical Russian nesting doll, is a painful 1930s melodrama with cartoonish characters and outdated dialogue. (As one character quips, you know a play will be bad when three people wrote it.) “Stage Kiss," however, is a smart new comedy from the poetic pen of Sarah Ruhl, a play with the heart of a poem about the logistics of love and that sloppy, slobbery line between performance and reality.

A mid-career actress known only as "She" arrives unpreprared to an audition.  She spills open her purse and hasn't read up about the show, but the director doesn't seem to mind.  Theater doesn't boast a lot of jobs for women too old to play Juliet and too young for Lady Macbeth, so they're both grateful to have found one another.  She arrives at the first rehearsal to learn the role requires considerable stage kissing (nothing out of the ordinary), and that the leading man is a former lover of hers (not ordinary).  Both or the actors are now partnered - She with a husband in finance and He with a girlfriend in kindergarten (teachin in kindergarten) – so the pair begin to professionally navigate the tricky terrain of pretending to be in love all the while remembering when they were first in love. Soon, the mechanical motions of the kiss trigger the biological emotions of the forgotten flame. Scientists have long shown that the upper lip is one of the most sensitive parts of the body – second only to a lower piece of anatomy – so it’s no surprise that 288 kisses (9 kisses a show, 8 shows a week, and a 4-week run, math courtesy of She’s financial husband) sends the pair into a stroll down Lovers and Memory Lanes.

Todd Rosenthal’s proscenium-stage-within-a-proscenium-stage perfectly illustrates the shifting worlds of performance and reality our star-crossed lovers exist in . Backstage at an unnamed theater, the wooden tiles of the floor intersect reddened brick that bears the faded letters “THEATER.” As the rehearsal process begins, wall pieces descend (and occasionally wobble) to construct the pastelled parlor of the play-within-a-play. When the leading lady and man leave the stage and head to an apartment, hidden windows in the brick illuminate. Reality and performance become just a matter of lighting. While most of his recent designs have been expert domestic sites (i.e. Martha and George’s book-filled home in “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” and the transparent tiers of the Weston estate in “August: Osage County”), he proves he can handle what lies out of sight for an audience - backstage rehearsals with yoga mats and high-rise apartments with pull-out sofas.

Kevin, the understudy, is next in the pecking order to lock lips with the actress.  He manhandles her, staring into her eyes like a tiger ready to eat its prey.  His inability to perfect the kiss is attributed to him being “not straight.” In a role that could easily be played as a flamboyant gay light on his feet, Jeffrey Carlson exists rather on stage like a boulder, heavy and clunky with each step. Lightness is left to the Director (expertly played by Ross Lehman), who bounces between his chair and the actor’s sides like a miniature Robert Falls. His fierce encouragement of the actor’s choices and suggestions - hold the cigarette like this, kiss her like this, shake her like this – sent laughs of recognition throughout the opening night crowd.

One thing the director can’t show the cast is the key to a healthy, long-term relationship. In a play with many roles, there is no clear role model for a healthy relationship. A passive-aggressive Midwestern kindergarten teacher can’t find her soulmate, the daughter of an actress and a finance worker walks in on mom schtupping the leading man. Romantic pairings seem to be made at random. X with Y, Y with Z, and Z with QRST. Eventually, one should be work...right?

“Marriage is about repetition,” the husband says to his wife, She. “Romance isn’t about repetition.” Just as an actor must go through the motions each night – whether with the thrill of opening night or the still of an undersold Saturday afternoon matinee – what shines through is there commitment. The rush of an opening night and of a first kiss fade quickly, and the steady rhythms of a four-week engagement or forty-year marriage take center stage.  Whether passion or commitment will rule our lives is a choice left up to each actor on this terrestial stage, but the playwright does reveal one pair that are true soulmates: Sarah Ruhl and the Stage.

"Stage Kiss" plays at the Goodman Theatre through June 5.  Tickets available at: http://www.goodmantheatre.org/

Xanax, Prozac, depression chatrooms, and electroshock therapy aren’t topics traditionally associated with musical theater; but “Next to Normal,” a new musical from Tom Kitt and Brian Yorkey, addresses these ignored psychiatric struggles that hide behind upper-middle class’ suburban addresses.

Diana, a middle-aged mother of two, gets ready for “Just Another Day”: she unenthusiastically sleeps with her husband, neglects her ambitious and angsty daughter, and pulls out two loaves of bread to make sandwiches for lunches. As the opening song builds to a crescendo, she puts several slices of bread on the table. Then on the chair. Then the floor. The trail of bread stretches from the wooden table to her worried husband’s feet. The singing stops and the music clunks into a cacophony, as if the musicians themselves weren’t expecting this episode. It's clear this story will not be a slice of normal life.

The power of "Next to Normal," and part of why it earned the 2010 Pulitzer Prize for Drama, is that its music follows the story. A traditional verse-chorus song structure isn’t imposed on a topic of choice; instead, the mother’s mental illness disrupts the very flow of the songs. Like  the characters within it, the musical is not normal: Diana’s doctors, played by Jeremy Kushnier (the original Ren in Footloose and Roger in Rent), slip into fantasy sequences where they belt out rock ballads; her son, who died as an infant, is given a teenage body, skillfully swinging about the stage like a demonic sprite; her home, a scaffold-like set, shifts like an unsolved Rubik’s cube to demonstrate the ordered chaos of her busy, mentally-ill life. This perfect marriage of content with form – the only marriage that works in the story – makes "Next to Normal" an iconoclastic work that will (hopefully) serve as a model for future Broadway musicals.

Alice Rippley, who earned a Tony for her performance, whole-heartedly attacks the role of Diana, but eight shows a week for almost two years has done considerable damage her voice. One could argue her raspy, untraditional approach sets her character apart, demonstrating the struggle of living in the aftermath of a trauma.  One could also argue her voice distracts from that story when she strains to hold a note.  Her next-to-normal voice becomes even more apparent against the backdrop of talented performers: Emma Hunton (the driven Natalie), Preston Sadlier (the dweeby Henry), and Jeremy Kushnier (the dynamic Dr. Madden/Dr. Fine).

The Great White Way has traditionally been a bit too white, and to be honest, I went into “Next to Normal” expecting “White People’s Problems: The Musical.” While it doesn’t make any advances regarding racial representation, the musical does push a medium toward tackling darker issues using a traditionally light-hearted medium. Musical theater is no longer just care-free romps like “Seventy-six Trombones” and “Oklahoma;” it can be harnessed to address the internal, existential, twenty-first century problems of anxiety, mental illness, and depression. Now, the tiny daily troubles hidden in your home just might be discussed at a different address: the Bank of America Theater, 18 West Monroe.

Hairstyles are a quick way to get a read for the age of an audience. “The Zoo Story” at Victory Gardens late last year boasted mostly grayed combovers; “God of Carnage” at the Goodman had shoulder-length cuts and shaved necklines; even “Sex with Strangers” was mostly a salt-and-pepper type of crowd. But at Monday’s opening night of Passing Strange, the 2008 Tony-Award winning rock musical-memoir conceived by musician Stew, the audience was filled with locks of a different color: died porcupine perms and spiked, jet-black up-dos. This was a young crowd.

Youth, rather appropriately, is also the name of the protagonist of Passing Strange; the Black teenage musician, raised in Los Angeles, struggles to find his creative voice and fears becoming too comfortable artistically. So the young artist trips – geographically and psychedelically – from Amsterdam to Berlin, from weed to speed. Watching over Youth’s juvenile delinquencies is the Narrator, peering down like an omniscient father, supplying exposition and exposing cracks (both logical and wise) in the boy’s life. Played on Broadway by Stew, the Narrator here is J.C. Brooks, lead singer of Chicago-based post-punk soul band The Uptown Sound, who energetically supplies all the show’s sound from upstage.

Passing Strange was a critical and commercial success on Broadway, and its Midwest reincarnation by Bailiwick Chicago demonstrates just how universal this story of a young artist is. In short, the dish works without Stew. Brooks is a commanding yet tender narrator; his voice, warm like a wool blanket, channels the pain and longing of an older, wiser artist. Despite his impeccable performance, though, he looks young for the role. A shiny, wide-shouldered black blazer ages him slightly, but weathered nostalgia does not come with only a costume. A younger Narrator does allow Brooks to be more actively engaged with the narrative than Stew was on Broadway. Perched on a stool with a wireless mic rather than cut off by a desk and micstand, Brook’s Narrator intervenes in the story, sitting on the set and occupying the same space as his younger self. He speaks swiftly and carries a wireless stick.

The show is smart, dealing with issues of class, race, gender, sexuality, art, reality, identity, and all their messy and magical intersections. Osiris Khepera stands out amongst the ensemble, embodying shameless commitment and raising all these themes in a speech as the son of a preacher man that that reaches everyone.  Beneath these intellectual themes, though, smashed PBR cans and Heinekens remind us this is a rock show. The director’s note quotes Shakespeare, while the playbill is shaped like an album track list. Through its own shifting identities, Passing Strange emerges as a complicated, emotional, and entertaining work of art. Whether it is a rock concert passing as a musical or a musical passing as a rock concert is still up for debate, but both performance forms are challenged though this blurring of the lines, like a streak of red tearing through heaven-pointed, spiked black hair.

One part solo drag show, one part infomercial, one part women’s history lecture, and three parts sexual innuendo, “Dixie’s Tupperware Party” is all parts party.   As you enter the studio theater at the Royal George, grab a nametag and a piece of candy from Dixie, who trots around with a candy dish like any proper party host should. When you take your seat, you won’t find a playbill with cast bios, but the Spring 2011 Tupperware catalogue (Dark blue water filters and pitchers are all the rage this spring.)

Dixie Longate, a formerly incarcerated mother of three from Mobile, Alabama, hosts the party/stars in the show, demonstrating the multiple uses for Tupperware merchandise. In a blue-polka dotted dress and three-inch heels, Dixie shows a caddy for 18 cupcakes that could also carry 24 Jello shots. Or perhaps an air-tight water bottle just enough room for a bottle of Yellowtail. And gentlemen, go ahead and marinate your meat in the double-ribbed container: it comes with a lifetime guarantee.

The solo show really shines during segments of audience participation. Raffle prize winners are invited on stage to massage a Tupperware brand ball or compete in a sealing context. Dixie’s improvisational abilities are as tight as the air-tight seal on the “plastic crap” she peddles. Last Wednesday, when Mike had some trouble operating a can opener, Dixie railed into him (“Mike. Mike. Mike. Miiiiiiiike. Mike. Mike.”) Of course, improvisation can lead to unedited material, and the night I attended, there were a few too many lesbian jokes directed at a young woman who was chosen to sit on stage. Of course, by placing the butt of the jokes in a couch on stage, audiences (and Dixie) can see how the person reacts and course-correct accordingly. The woman laughed.

The man behind the woman on stage is Kris Andersson, who a decade ago was working as an actor in Los Angeles. A dare from a friend gave birth to a character who became the third-highest seller of Tupperware in 2003, acknowledged as such during the company’s annual Jubilee. Producers took notice, and “Dixie’s Tupperware Party” transitioned from an evening in someone’s home to and evening at the New York Fringe Festival. The production, in various incarnations, has been on tours ever since.  Now 41, Andersson seemed a bit tired at the end of the show where he essentially talks for 100 minutes. An eleventh-hour emotional monologue allows him the opportunity to sit, and when the lights dim and Dixie talks about winning the Jubilee (an annual party celebrating Tupperware's top sellers), the evening is given some emotional gravitas.

The emotional thread that carries throughout the piece centers on the creator of Tupperware parties: Brownie Wise.  Throughout the evening, Dixie worships the black-and-white photograph of Wise, who took the newly-invented Tupperware off the shelves and promoted the product through parties in her home after WWII. At a time when many women were losing their jobs as the war effort ended, Wise, according to Andersson via Dixie, empowered women working at home to earn extra income using their party planning and entertaining skills. Today, Andersson uses his entertaining skills to support himself, donning Dixie’s drag to sex up the prudish 1950s image of a Tupperware Party.

 “Aren’t you dressed nice, Mr. Zach,” Dixie remarked as the evening began, reading from my nametag and offering me a sugar-free mint from her candy dish. “My friend was dressed up, too, but changed before we came,” I replied. “Oh, of course, would dress up for the theater?” she deadpanned. “It’s just fine to look like a common whore.”