Sealed For Freshness: Giving Bad Taste a Bad Name

"I write plays for people who hate theatre," says Doug Stone in a recently published interview.  Well, if I had to spend my time watching plays of the embarrassingly low quality of Sealed for Freshness, the horrifically insensitive and unfunny, borderline hateful comedy which he wrote and directed, it wouldn't be long before I fit comfortably within his desired demographic.  With the audience when I attended exclaiming "ew" at many of the crass and witless punch lines, the piece is so unwatchable you find yourself feeling sorry for the blameless actors who are made to play their caricature roles with the kind of degrading, unsympathetic interpretations usually reserved for blackface minstrel shows.

I was actually pretty excited about seeing this one at first because it takes place at a Tupperware party.  With a history that is perhaps mostly forgotten, Tupperware holds a very interesting place in the American movement for gender equality.  After Earl Tupper invented the revolutionary "burping seal" lid for plastic food containers, which successfully locked out air and preserved foods longer, a woman named Brownie Wise devised a unique sales strategy focused on post-WWII married suburban women who were being forced back into domestic life after experiencing the excitement of self-sufficiency while their husbands were fighting overseas.  Throughout the 1950's and beyond, Tupperware was sold exclusively through a network of women-only parties, hosted by housewives in their homes, where a representative would demonstrate the products and take sales orders.  For many American women of the time it was their first taste of running a business.

Sealed for Freshness is set in 1968 and Stone's story – a good idea actually – is of a group of women marveling over the freshness-preserving qualities of Tupperware while their marriages are going stale because their husbands no longer find them as attractive as they did twenty years ago.  Unfortunately, the evening wears on like a feminist play written by a committee of drunken frat boys trying to score at a Take Back The Night rally.

"No Richard, it's not a liquored-up lesbian orgy," explains Bonnie (Jennifer Dorr White) to her unfeeling husband (Brian Dykstra) as she tries to prepare their living room for her guests.  Their expository conversation goes into great detail about how Richard can't keep his eyes off their son's 17-year-old girlfriend's butt and even greater detail about how Bonnie knows that her husband has been watching stag films because she's noticed "those stains" in his boxers.  (That prompted the first communal "ew" from the audience.)

The selling of the wares is run by the overly peppy Jean (Nancy Hornback in an outfit and wig that seem to emulate Jackie Kennedy) and the plastic-personalitied Diane (Patricia Dalen), but the most undesirable assignments of the night are given to J.J. Van Name and Kate VanDevender, who play such unsympathetic stereotypes that the mere act of reciting their lines on stage could be construed as an act of sexual harassment in the workplace.

Van Name plays the very pregnant Sinclair, who drinks vodka martinis because gin gives her vaginal dryness.  (Vaginal dryness is a running gag in this play.)  She also smokes, not believing the recent reports that drinking and smoking may be harmful to her child because her other kids seemed to turn out okay.  ("It's my fifth kid so you know the express aisle is wide open.")  A reclining mass of negative energy, Sinclair is blessed with such zingers as "I feel like I've been raped and left in a mall parking lot" and "I have an ass with more dimples than a room full of smiling 1^st graders."  The comic climax, I suppose, begins when Sinclair believes she's having contractions and ends in a loud fart.

VanDevender has the misfortune of being cast as the air headed blonde Tracy Ann, who speaks with helium-high pitched squeaky, lispy tones and is prone to giggling uncontrollably.  (Really…  where did the author come up with such a unique idea for a comic character?)  Tracy Ann buys her Tupperware in an assortment of hues because she doesn't want to be prejudiced against the darker colors (I'm not kidding.  That's a line in the play.) and advises the others that giving oral sex isn't so terrible once you get used to breathing through your nose.  Her story involving the family dogs and a plate of deviled eggs concludes with, "Their poop smelled like paprika for a week!"

If the comedy is ineffectual, the playwright's attempts at poignancy are simply feasts of clichés:

"I wanted more than this!"

"I could have been you!  I could have had a career!"

"I believe the Lord puts these barriers in our way for a reason."

"Am I just a wife to you or an object of desire?"

"You're not the same woman I married."

I think you get the idea.

Set designer Rob Odorisio does a great job detailing Bonnie and Richard's mid-west suburban living room with kitschy touches that define wannabe sophistication and Rob Bevenger's costumes are affectionately humorous.  And whomever thought of giving critics their press kits sealed in a Tupperware container (#616 Cold Cut Keeper) handed me the best laugh of the night.

Photos by Carol Rosegg:  Top:  Jennifer Dorr White, Nancy Hornback, Patricia Dalen and Kate VanDevender

Center:  Jennifer Dorr White, J.J. Van Name (on table), Nancy Hornback and Kate VanDevender

Bottom:  Nancy Hornback, J.J. Van Name, Jennifer Dorr White, Kate VanDevender and Patricia Dalen