Murder most hilarious returns to Vertigo with Shear Madness
Quick. Name the top three running non- musicals of all time.
If you said Shear Madness you win, says the show’s director Bob Lohrmann.
In a short attention span 21st century digital universe, the staying power of Shear Madness, which opens Friday at Vertigo, is a thing of awe.
It has supplanted Life With Father to take over No. 1, two and three on the list.
“Our production in Boston has been running continuously since 1978,” Lohrmann says. “Our production in Washington, at the Kennedy Center has been running for 27 years and then our production in Chicago, which is no longer in existence, ran for 17 years before it closed.
“It is staggering,” he says. “It’s phenomenal.”
The madcap, semi- improvised, comic murder mystery is one of those shows with an astonishing knack for reinventing itself, almost every single night, says Lohrmann.
“The show evolves ( with each production),” he says. “It’s different than it was 30 years ago.”
That’s because Shear Madness is a murder mystery where the audience are the witnesses, who make suggestions — with a little help from the characters — throughout the show to help solve the crime.
All of which may help explain the show’s enduring popularity with audiences around the world, including Croatia, Baghdad, Iceland, Seoul and Paris ( and across Canada).
“The funny thing about this show,” Lohrmann says, “is that it’s three things in one.
“First off, and foremost, it’s a murder mystery,” he says. “So that’s serious.
“Second,” he says, “it’s a comedy. And that’s fun. Murder mystery’s fun — and we have a lot of silly business, and nonsense that goes along with that.
“And then, ( finally),” he adds, “it’s an improv, where the actors have to think on their feet — we don’t know what’s going to be said. We can predict some things, but we can’t predict everything ( the audience is going to contribute to the story).”
Although after running around the world for close to four decades, the show’s producers have a pretty good idea.
“It would be disingenuous,” says Lohrmann, “to suggest we haven’t had a lot of experience with audiences, and knowing what they tend to think is important in terms of investigating the crime — but we are always surprised. I would say there’s never a production where we’re not surprised by what the witnesses want to know about.”
Longtime Vertigo audiences who remember former artistic director Mark Bellamy, who memorably played the role of Tony the hairdresser in Shear Madness on a couple of different occasions — in 2007 and 1999 — get a new Tony with this production.
He’s Frank Zotter — who won a Calgary Critics Award a couple of years back for his work in Jack Goes Boating — who picks up the scissors and sets out to uncover who killed Isabel Channing.
It’s a challenge for Zotter, because he must be prepared to go along with whatever the audience suggests, which is not an actors’ usual way of working.
How do you prepare a part you’re making up on the fly?
“Fortunately I saw the show,” Zotter says, “and I think that really helps, because it is a really specific piece.
“Actors talk about being in the pocket of things,” he says, “where it’s so easy to be present, you’re firing on all pistons and you’re you’re really in the moment ( onstage).
“I have yet to discover the pocket of this ( show),” he says, “because this one, based on the history it has, definitely has an ( unconventional) success formula to it.
“It’s finding my kind of part in the ( show’s) recipe,” he says, “how I can align my talent — but I hope to get in the pocket, because it’s a beautiful, fun show.”
Lohrmann, who in addition to directing the piece has played every male role in the show ( and the female ones in rehearsal), knows Shear Madness can be unnerving for actors — and says that makes it that much more fun for audiences.
“It’s unsettling for actors,” he says. “And that’s not a bad thing. It’s scary for them.
“I’m asking the actors to do things that they don’t know what’s going to happen all the time,” he says, “and they don’t know how it’s going to come at them. So it’s really a lot of knowing what to do, knowing what the circumstances ( in the play) are and then just really being on your toes, trusting the process and trust that it will all unfold the way it needs to unfold.”
That philosophy extends to the audience, where everything is up for grabs in every single performance of Shear Madness — including whodunnit.
For Zotter, Shear Madness marks a personal milestone as well. It’s his 100th professional production, since he started acting 28 years ago.
He intends to put the most important lesson he learned from those first 99 to good use playing Tony in Shear Madness.
“What it comes down to,” he says, “the formula that works for acting is the same one you realized when you first got bit by it: that it should be fun. It should always be fun.
“It’s about playing,” he says. “And I want to keep reminding myself of that.”