i just got back from “vacation” where i saw an amusing little murder mystery/comedy play. it was called shear madness, and its been running for a long time. at the end of the play they announce that whomever the audience thought was the murderer was the way the acted the ending. so i was wondering if anyone else has seen this play and i f they did, who was the murderer in theirs, and describe the ending (if you can)
Shear Madness made its debut in 1997, and I think that’s when I saw it. My memory being what it is, I can’t for the life of me remember the ending, but I do remember leaving the theatre saying, “Gosh, I liked this a lot; I’m tired of all those somber plays.”
come on people. im sure someone else must have seen this! help me out here.
It’s much, much older than that, Frannie. It may be new in 1997 where you live (San Francisco?), but I saw it in D.C. in 1990!
According to its homepage, “The Boston, Chicago, and Washington, D.C. productions of Shear Madness hold the record for the first, second, and third longest-running plays in the history of the American theatre.” Apparently, it’s been playing in Boston for 20 years, and in D.C. for 12. (I’m pretty sure there’s also an NYC production, but the website doesn’t mention it.)
Sorry, hypergirl, but I have no recollection whatsoever of the ultimate resolution when I saw it. I recall thinking it was an ok play, but that it didn’t live up to the hype it was getting. We probably voted that the bimbo did it, just so she’d be on stage a little longer.
Hah! Like we’d let this open in New York! We’d laugh it back home to Kokomo in twenty minutes!
I saw the 1,000th performance in Washington, DC, at Kennedy Center, several years back. They brought in the DC Police Commissioner, some honcho from the FBI, and four mystery writers (Linda Barnes, Mary Higgins Clark, Robert B. Parker, and Donald E. Westlake)…the cops did cameos, and the writers came up with alternate solutions to the crime. The extras made the evening worthwhile, which it wouldn’t have been if it had just been the play itself.
Damn, I wish there’d been a bimbo playing the ingenue role in the production I saw. We had a little butterball trying to play sexy. The part really needed a Lee Meredith type.
Oh geeeeeez, I feel like (read that, “am”) such an idiot! I went to that very website and misread the blurb about 1997. I live in Cleveland, btw. Yes, we have theatre in Cleveland. :rolleyes: If I’m not mistaken (and I certainly wouldn’t be surprised to find that I am), I seem to remember reading that Cleveland is second only to NYC in its total number of theatre seats.