For my wife, a thrift store is truly the happiest place on earth, and she’s infected me with an thirst for vintage hunting. She has a kindred spirit in professional estate sale organizer and comic Kelly Dee, who has blended the community-building buzz of a rummage sale with a bounty of big laughs in this hilarious hybrid of one-woman comedy and shopping opportunity.
Raised in Queens by discount merchandise resellers who were rumored to be in the mob, Dee’s family moved to Florida and flipped salvage from Disney’s lost-and-found auctions, launching her on a lifelong collecting spree that’s now led to this midlife-crisis fire sale. Nearly everything on stage — from groovy threads and Life magazines to Stallone DVDs — is available for purchase before or after the performances, during which Dee sorts through her detritus while deftly delivering deceptively offhand monologues, whose casualness belies their careful construction.
Nobody — especially not Fringe artists — ever escapes their childhood unscathed, but Dee (with the help of co-writer Stew Jamesson and director Lauren O’Quinn) has upcycled her scars into a sidesplitting stand-up set with a one-of-a-kind interactive hook. Anecdotes similar to Dee’s about her Cuban athlete mother and Irish ex-cop father are affecting, yet not unheard-of at Fringe; however, I guarantee no other Festival artist will lament her failed relationships with van dwellers and meth-heads before brandishing a Jesus-shaped dildo.
Just be warned: This “Estate Sale” will inspire you to clear out your literal and metaphorical attic, if only in order to make room for more must-have finds.
Orlando Fringe: Tickets and times for “The Estate Sale”
The John and Rita Lowndes Shakespeare Center
This article appears in May 8-14, 2024.