Of all the changes Donald Trump has visited on the DC area since his second term began, one may be the most improbable: This summer, the proudly campy comedy Shear Madness, which has run at the Kennedy Center since 1987, will close when the arts complex shuts for renovations the President has ordered. Producer Bruce Jordan confirms to Washingtonian that the local institution will end—at least for a couple of years—in July. Efforts to find an alternate venue didn’t pan out, which means its long streak of performances will finally be broken.
So will it return? “We just don’t know at this point,” says Jordan. “I’m sure they’d like to have us back,” he adds. “We’ve made a lot of money for them over the years.” Indeed, former Kennedy Center president Michael Kaiser once said, “The profits from Shear Madness provide the Kennedy Center with more resources and allows us to offer more adventuresome theater.” Roma Daravi, the center’s current spokesperson, tells Washingtonian in an email: “We look forward to welcoming Shear Madness back upon reopening!”
Jordan says he and the show’s other producer, Marilyn Abrams, found out about the Kennedy Center’s closure “the same way you did”—via a news report. They heard from the center’s management about a month later. “They were sorry they had forgotten to call us,” says Abrams. That’s perhaps a testament to how smoothly Shear Madness has run over the past four decades. Tens of thousands of students have seen the play in the last year, Jordan notes.
Jordan and Abrams have steered the franchise over the last 39 years. Each production—there are around 20 worldwide—is torqued to local standards. The Washington version is set in a Georgetown hair salon, and every night there are new jokes drawn from current events. The formula works: Shear Madness‘s Boston production was the longest running non-musical play in American theater history. It lasted three weeks short of 40 years, snuffed out by the pandemic; the DC production, which plays mostly to audiences of tourists and kids on school trips to DC, is a close second.
The show proved to be critic-proof during its run. Arch Campbell, who reported on local entertainment for local TV for a similar number of years, famously gave “Shear Madness” perhaps its best review, saying it was “the most fun I’ve ever had at the Kennedy Center.” Others compared it to a “pie-eating contest on the White House lawn” or “an extended vaudeville routine,” but Abrams says “we could fill a tour bus with the letters” they receive from tourists who’ve had a blast at the show.
Abrams and Jordan credit Shear Madness‘s longevity in part to it staying topical, incorporating references to current events and local landmarks. (When I saw it last year, even a joke about the deadly plane crash over the Potomac got laughs.) “It takes place today in Washington,” Abrams says. “It’s never dated.” Still, Trump’s controversial takeover of the Kennedy Center, on which he slapped his name, and the planned closure are never part of the proceedings. “That’s a no-no,” Jordan says. “Everybody wants to put in ten Trump jokes, and you just can’t. We’re very even-handed about it.”
The pair are unaware of any needs the Theater Lab may have in the upcoming renovations. (“It’s a perfect 400-seat theater,” Jordan says.) The play’s set is so solid it has running water. The biggest physical problem the producers encounter, Abrams says, is finding replacement barber chairs when the old ones wear out: “That’s a relic, but a lot of our laughs depend on it.”
Local actors, too, have come to depend on the show’s financial stability. It’s one of the best-paying theater gigs in town. “It gets them year-round health insurance, which is a big thing to actors today,” Jordan says. “One of the actresses that I talked to a month ago said, ‘Don’t forget that Shear Madness got me my house.'”
Jordan and Abrams split the show’s profits and losses with the center, so they won’t make any money while the Kennedy Center is dark. Efforts to find a local theater that would host Shear Madness in the interim went nowhere, Jordan says. But they’re not in financial peril. Shear Madness‘s Paris production is in its 15th year; its South Korean production is in its 13th. They’ve had performances in China. The show plays in regional theaters around the US and has had long runs in Philadelphia, San Francisco, and Chicago. “I mean, we have a production in Russia and a production in Ukraine,” Jordan says.
So what will Shear Madness be like if it returns to DC? That will depend on what happens between now and then. “If we come back, we’re just going to have to come back as fresh as a daisy,” says Jordan, “[do] a bunch of rewrites and see what’s funny two years from now, if anything.”
Andrew Beaujon joined Washingtonian in late 2014. He was previously with the Poynter Institute, TBD.com, and Washington City Paper. He lives in Del Ray.
