Who`d have thought it?
Fourteen years ago, Bruce Jordan and Marilyn Abrams-two former schoolteachers turned little-known upstate New York summer stock actors-bought the rights to a forgotten, dreadfully serious German mystery drama called
”Scherenschnitt.” An audience participation piece, it had been authored in 1965 by an obscure Swiss playwright named Paul Portner and had been gathering dust in a trunk.
Transforming the murky work into the broadest kind of comedy, they played it for two seasons at the Lake George (N.Y.) Dinner Theater. Encouraged by the audience response, they opened it in a small theater in Boston on a cold night in January, 1980, for what they hoped would be a 31-week run.
They didn`t keep the ”Scherenschnitt” title, of course. If they had, it might never have made it out of Lake George. Instead, they called it ”Shear Madness,” and with it they made history. In 1987, the Boston production of the show set a record for the longest-running nonmusical play in American theater history, eclipsing the mark set by Broadway`s ”Life With Father”
decades before.
Monday, it`s going to make history again. The Chicago company of ”Shear Madness,” which opened at the Blackstone Hotel`s Mayfair Theater in 1982 and holds the record for the most performances of any kind of play in this city, will become the second-longest-running nonmusical in American theater, pushing ”Father” into third place.
How did this happen? ”Shear Madness” isn`t Chekhov, or even Kaufmann and Hart. It`s a ”comedy whodunit” set in a loony unisex hair salon. The audience not only decides the outcome of the plot but often participates in the action-as when a man attending a performance at Washington`s John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts stole the show by rising to doff his toupee much as a matador would his hat.
The script includes all manner of outrageous sight gags and the dialogue is carried along by a lot of smarmy double entendres and what you`d call ”gay schtick.” As Washington Post critic David Richards noted in his not exactly rave review, ”What can you say about a show in which one character . . . says `Rachmaninoff` and another immediately replies `Gusundheit`?”
”I, for one, say, `Spare me,` ” said Richards.
Yet it was twice chosen ”Best Play of the Year” in the Chicago Tribune`s annual readers` poll. It has been playing in as many as nine cities simultaneously, including Montreal and Madrid. Abrams and Jordan bought the rights to the play for just $50,000 and opened it in Boston for $65,000 more, but it now amounts to a $6-million-a-year industry.
How come? The producers of ”Annie II” sank $7 million into what was supposed to be a sure thing, only to watch it die virtually overnight. Why has this one-set, six-character frolic proved so durable?
Jordan and Abrams have a two-word answer: ”It`s fun.”
”You try to get the local flavor of the cities,” said co-producer Abrams. ”That`s fun for the actors and fun for people who`ve seen it elsewhere and come to see it again, because it`s never the same.”
”We make the audience feel important,” said co-producer and director Jordan. ”We help them entertain each other. What we are basically doing is playing a game.”
It`s a game everyone in the audience can play. As the two detectives seek the solution to the foul murder of the unseen eccentric former concert star Isabel Czerny, audience members shout out helpful hints or complaints when something obvious is overlooked. The spectators get to confer with the detectives during intermission, and vote on how the play should come out.
The humor is not only broad but also topical and regional. In Washington, the action is set in Georgetown, and you get Mayor Barry jokes. In Chicago, the salon is on the Gold Coast, and you get jokes about Chicago politics.
”Madness” also has tended to draw enormous numbers of people who don`t normally go to the theater-people who don`t read reviews but follow the recommendations of their friends or fellow conventioneers.
But much of the show`s magic lies with the owner-producers themselves. Abrams and Jordan have appeared as actors in every production they`ve opened, and still seem to enjoy themselves-and ”Madness”-immensely.
The natty, effervescent, bespectacled Jordan, who wears saddle shoes, blue blazers and seems a natural for the Downy Fabric Softener man role he once played in television commercials, was born in Pittsfield, Mass., and grew up on Long Island. He yearned for a theatrical career as early as high school but ended up a high school teacher himself, conducting classes in drama in Glen Falls, N.Y.
”I had all these gifted students, so I thought maybe I should know a lot more about the professional theater and took a leave of absence for a year to go down to New York,” he said.
He auditioned for work in Downy and Beechnut Gum commercials and got both jobs his very first day.
Abrams, an irrepressible lady who seems made of equal parts of Auntie Mame and Jewish mother (she has four children), was born in Easton, Pa., and grew up in New York City, the daughter of vaudevillians. She graduated from Cornell and became a schoolteacher like Jordan, but followed a natural bent into summer stock, her eventual credits including top roles in ”The Sound of Music,” ”Annie Get Your Gun” and ”I Do, I Do.”
A career turn took her to Lake George, where Jordan was directing.
”The producer hired me,” she said. ”The director looked at my picture and said, `Oh my God.` ”
”You looked like somebody riding on the back of a motorcycle,” Jordan said. ”You had a D.A. I thought, `Oh God, this is never going to work.` ”
”We made friends fast,” she said.
”We had a ball,” he said.
In their long collaboration, they`ve made a few mistakes. One was opening ”Madness” in St. Louis without first learning about the territory. As a consequence, it closed there after a ”mere” seven months.
Another was rejecting an actor who auditioned for the hairdresser role because of his raspy, froggy voice.
”I told him, `Do you really feel your voice could fill up a theater?`
” Jordan said.
The actor was Harvey Firestein.
But the big mistake-of listening to naysayers skeptical of their taking a flyer on a crazy idea-that one they never made.
Though both live in the East part of the year, they maintain living quarters and an office in Chicago`s Lake Point Tower. On their office wall is a framed letter, written by Jordan to Abrams in 1976, that says, ”Marilyn, there`s a play here that I think, if we could get the rights to it, would be a wonderful piece to do.”
It sure wasn`t ”Annie II.”
