Reviews

ADDISON – Neither rain nor sleet nor snow – not even common decency – can keep Dixie Longate from her appointed rounds.

Dixie (also known as Los Angeles actor Kris Andersson) opened WaterTower Theatre's seventh annual Out of the Loop Festival on Thursday with her one-man-in-drag show Dixie's Tupperware Party. It's a real Tupperware party, if that's your idea of a good time.

In fact, some of the most entertaining moments in the show come when Dixie gives us the hard sell on cupcake transporters (also good for Jell-O shots) or collapsible storage containers (we can't publish what those are also good for). The artist stands at a table after the show and takes orders if you want to buy any of the merchandise.

Dixie begins visiting with audience members – and putting them on the spot – even before the show officially begins. She makes friends quite easily and eagerly lets them know that everything is fantastic. You can make friends with Dixie, too. Just don't get bent out of shape if she calls you a bad name as she walks away from you. ("Slut" is one that we can print here – unlike most of the others.)

Mr. Andersson's show has impeccable avant-garde credentials, but he's not ashamed to steal ideas from the outrageously popular. Dixie is like a white-trash Southern cousin of Dame Edna. She even borrows the trick of singling out whole sections of the audience for insults. (With Dame Edna, it's usually the "paupers"; Dixie singled out the "homosexuals" in the seats on the west side of the house on Thursday.)

All that half-under-the-breath name-calling might remind you of David Spade in his Saturday Night Live days, too. But Mr. Spade couldn't get away with throwing in this many dirty double-entendres on network TV, even late night and on the weekends.

Dixie, who spends a lot of the 75-minute show improvising, has a running joke about how much liquor she can guzzle from all those no-spill plastic containers. A lot of the show's funniest moments on Thursday came when she traded barbs with the real-life drunks in the audience. The sane and sober members of the crowd proved themselves good sports when Dixie called them onstage to participate in the party contests.

For me, the string of recent Southern-grotesque shows at WaterTower has played itself out by now. Ms. Longate has her fans, though. Because of demand for tickets, the company has postponed the opening of its self-produced festival headliner, Blackbird, so that Dixie can throw another yet party on Saturday evening, in addition to the three others previously scheduled for the weekend.

•The Out of the Loop Festival at WaterTower Theatre, Addison Theatre Centre, 15650 Addison Road, Addison, through March 16. $10 to $15, festival pass $50. 972-450-6232, www.watertowertheatre.org.