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Photo by Don Kellogg

Sunday, March 11, 2007

Sealed for Freshness

Over at the New World Stages - they're having a Tupperware party every night! The party takes place back in 1968 in a time warp living room full of swanky lamps, a working bar, amber glass ashtrays, shag carpeting, iron railings and brown paneling!! Unfortunately, the best part about the show was the set! Everyone in the audience (yes, unfortunately it was a Saturday night crowd from the suburbs) couldn't stop picking out all the museum pieces that apparently still exist in mom and dad's living room (and talking about it like they were sitting in front of their TV, not at a live theater event!)

I wish more could be said about the play itself... The cast - 5 women from a mid-west suburb - could not be more stereotypical 1968! Bonnie, the host, is upset because her husband who is on his way to bowling night said she didn't look as good as she did 20 years ago (the booze starts flowing after that!); Tracy Ann, the stupid bimbo farm girl from Iowa, had a baby-talk voice that was like nails on a chalk board and after 20 minutes at least 5 people got up and left from the agony of having to listen to her. (I paid $39 for tickets and was going to stick it out to the bitter end no matter how awful it got!); Diane, the Tupperware superstar sales lady, is glamorous on the outside but dead on the inside; and, last, but not least, the "identical opposite" sisters, Jean and Sinclair. Jean is the sister who got all the attention and married rich and Sinclair is the fat, foul mouthed, bitter, booze-hound who has 4 kids and one more on the way (think Roseann Barr).

Now that we have the stage set with this cast of characters - the Tupperware party begins (yes, they really pull out the product and extol its virtues!) and we find out that on the surface all the makeup and polish hides the dirty laundry and ugly truth. Diane's husband didn't die -he left her and she can't have children. Jean's husband is probably cheating on her, Sinclair resents her sister (surprise!) and hates her kids. The ideals are true '60's/'70's with the women questioning if they should have a career or exist to serve their husbands.

It's as if someone sealed away Bonnie's living room in the Tupperware and just opened it up for us all to see today! Unfortunately for us -Tupperware works.