Whodunit’s Popularity Is No Mystery : Stage: ‘Shear Madness,’ the longest-running play in U.S. theater history, has yet to play on Broadway or in Los Angeles.

WASHINGTON — “We would love to be in Los Angeles or Beverly Hills. We know the play would work like gangbusters out there. We’ve searched all over the L.A. area for an intimate 300-seat theater, but we can’t find one,” said the co-producer of “Shear Madness.”

Bruce Jordan was relaxing over a drink at the Kennedy Center’s Roof Terrace Restaurant after a recent performance of “Shear Madness,” the longest-running non-musical play in American theater history, a play yet to run on Broadway or in Los Angeles.

The zany whodunit, which takes place in a unisex hair salon by the same name, will celebrate its fifth year at the Kennedy Center Wednesday with nearly 2,000 performances. It plays in the Center’s Theater Lab Cabaret.

The play also is in its 13th year in Boston where, on Nov. 16, 1987, it eclipsed the record set by “Life With Father,” then Broadway and America’s longest-running non-musical with 2,324 performances. “Shear Madness” now has more than 5,200 performances in Boston.

The mystery of who stabbed unseen concert pianist Isabel Czerny in the throat with the hairdresser’s shears also holds longevity records in Washington, Philadelphia, Chicago, St. Louis, Houston, Kansas City and Montreal (the latter city as an English-speaking play).

In the play, Czerny pounds away on the piano upstairs above the salon driving patrons and proprietors nuts until someone puts her out of their misery with the shears.

“Shear Madness” will mark its 10th anniversary at the Blackstone Hotel’s Mayfair Theater in Chicago on Sept. 21. Besides the Kennedy Center, Boston and Chicago, it is currently playing in St. Paul, Minn.; Fort Worth; Kansas City, Mo.; Tel Aviv; Budapest, Hungary; Santiago, Chile; Buenos Aires and Madrid.

It is scheduled to open in Austin, Tex., the last week of this month; in Winnipeg, Canada, the first week in September, and in Tampa, Fla., the last week in October. Since the comedy premiered at Upstate New York’s Lake George Dinner Theater in 1978, it has been performed more than 15,000 times, has been seen by at least 3 million people and has employed more than 500 actors.

It is in the Guinness Book of World Records and is grossing between $5 million and $6 million a year.

Pretty good for a little-known German-language mystery drama called “Scherenschnitt,” written in 1965 by the late Swiss playwright Paul Portner, not going anywhere and gathering dust when discovered by Bruce Jordan.

In the Cranberry Productions office in Albany, N.Y., hangs a framed 1976 letter from Jordan to Marilyn Abrams that begins: “Marilyn. There’s a play that I think if we could get the rights to it would be a wonderful piece to do. . . .”

Jordan and Abrams paid Portner $50,000 plus royalties for the world rights to the play (his widow continues to get royalties).

Schoolteachers and actors at the time, Jordan and Abrams had been looking for a production for a dinner-theater to act in and produce as partners.

Portner’s play was serious drama. Jordan and Abrams adapted it as a mystery comedy for six actors.

The characters in the play are Tony Whitcomb, the salon’s proprietor; Barbara DeMarco, his gum-snapping manicurist; Eleanor Shubert, a haughty socialite; Eddie Lawrence, an antiques dealer, and two cops, Lt. Nick Rosetti and Detective Mike Thomas.

Before each performance, the director and actors meet to discuss current news items that can be injected in a humorous way into the show. There is a great deal of improvisation and interplay with the audience.

In the Kennedy Center production one night recently when Eleanor Shubert entered the salon to have her hair done, Tony Whitcomb in an aside to Barbara DeMarco, said: “She looks just like George Bush at a Japanese steak dinner.”

Each one of the six actors is capable of killing the concert pianist. When the play starts, no one--not even the actors--is sure who the murderer will be. The murder is solved according to the reaction and interplay with actors and audience.