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Living in D.C., I’ve become a fan of the Kennedy Center, especially because it has a lot of free presentations or in a less expensive price in the “theater lab” section. From May 1st until September 30th, “Shear Madness” will be on that stage.
I had heard the name before, but I had no idea that “Shear Madness” was the longest-running nonmusical play in the U.S. It has been running in D.C. for 26 years already and in Boston for almost 35 years!
The plot is fairly simple: set in a hair salon, it deals with the sudden death of its landlady, who lives above it. So the 4 main characters who were in the salon at the time of death become suspects. The thing that differentiates the play from others, however, is that the second act is purely improvised. The policeman who is conducting the investigation asks the audience for help. So people from the audience volunteer to ask questions to anyone they want and, based on the audience’s reaction, they change the guilty person. Therefore, every performance has a different ending, depending on how the audience reacted.
Even though it’s set in the early 1980s (the set, the costumes, the telephones, etc.), the jokes are from current events, which is probably one of the reasons why the show is still popular. Another curious characteristic is that it is set in the city in which it plays, so there are a lot of local jokes. As someone who has been living in Washington for a while, I got them. I believe, however, that these jokes wouldn’t work with tourists, because they probably don’t know the names of the neighborhoods, for example.
Another merit of the play is the cast, who clearly knows each other very well, because the syntonization in the improvised part of the play is astonishing. To sum up, it’s a fun and entertaining way to spend two hours.
