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Thursday, March 28, 2024
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"Cutting Throats, Not Corners"

ÒShear MadnessÓ at Studio Arena


"Choose-your-own-adventure" might have been a popular 1980s children's book-craze, but more often than not, a play that relies on audience participation is not the sort people wind up recommending to friends.

That's why it comes as a surprise that "Shear Madness" is not only the longest-running play in America (at three separate theaters) but also, in its latest incarnation at Studio Arena, a hysterical and amusing way to spend an evening.

As is often the case with audience-participation plays, "Shear Madness" is a murder mystery. Tony Whitcomb (Jimmy Janowski) owns a hair salon located at the corner of Elmwood and Utica in downtown Buffalo (part of the play's attraction is that it adapts itself to local stories and locations without forcing the correlations).

He and his assistant, Barbara DeMarco (Robin Long), have to deal with an elderly upstairs neighbor, who once held the concert world in thrall with her piano playing, but as of late, has irritated both of them as she practices for a comeback tour.

The play is set up quickly, with an assortment of customers - including one played by the department of theater and dance lecturer Richard Wesp - popping in for trims, cuts, and washes.

The humor in this initial portion of the play is riotous, with deliveries from Jankowski and Christopher Tarjan (as Nick Rossetti, a member of the highly-respected Buffalo Police Department) making the audience roar with laughter. Sly zingers from DeMarco are given an added kick, thanks to Long's attitude, which is set off nicely by her seemingly-vinyl, electric blue miniskirt.

When Barbara returns to the stage screaming about the dead body of the pianist, though, the play kicks both the drama and humor up a notch. As the audience begins to take part in the evening - a twist that is handled masterfully by Tarjan - the real talent of these actors begins to shine through.

When one audience member wearing an orange T-shirt questions DeMarco as to where she made a purchase, Long doesn't miss a beat before shooting back, "K-Mart, same as where you got that shirt!"

The actors show a level of comfort with their characters that makes up for any weaknesses in the script. As elderly tart Mrs. Schubert, who is cheating on her husband with her butler, Jeanne Cairns both gives and receives some of the night's best zingers, from snapping at a young man who mistook her fur hat for a wig, to being subjected to the come-on from Lawrence: "You never know, I'm into antiques!"

The best moments of the night came once the actors had departed from their set script and begun to spiral into the barely-controlled chaos of Rossetti's, accepting input from the audience for his investigation. The participation itself came mostly from the younger members of the audience, which is interesting, given that the theater's main devotees (as reported by Artvoice) are white, upper-middle class, elderly women.

One of the weakest points of an audience-participation play is making sure each character has enough motivation that any result can be believed without incriminating the "innocent" characters. "Shear Madness" avoids this pitfall with an artful set of relationships among characters, so that no matter what way the audience votes, any ending will be satisfying.

It's difficult to review this sort of performance without giving away too many of the surprises. Half the fun of the evening is that the audience never knows where the next laugh is coming from. It is a tactic that not only encourages the actors to stretch their boundaries but also results in some of the night's most hysterical moments.

That being said, "Shear Madness" provides an easy-going night out. The play may have lost a bit of its ability to provide psychological commentary over the course of its translation from a German play, which was based on teaching psychology students how different people see different events, but the entertainment value of the piece has not lessened.





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