Shear Madness at Stage West lets Calgary decide whodunit

No spoilers, but, make sure you pay attention to everything.

Shear Madness starts off as your typical Stage West experience; a drink, the buffet, a lighthearted comedy set in a hair salon, and then bam — the fourth wall comes down and the audience is expected to help solve a murder.

“There’s definitely that shock — ‘Oh no, this is the part where he’s going to ask us to do stuff and we don’t want to go up on the stage,’” says Kevin Sepaul, who plays the detective. “And we don’t do that, that’s not what the show is about at all; really it’s getting them involved and finding just the little specific things.”

The truth about Shear Madness is that while the audience tries to discover the truth, the truth changes. As the actors actually follow the lead of the audience and change the ending by following the clues that the audience finds.

“Tony has an oven mitt on when he first enters, he’s been tending to his goulash. That oven mitt has come up three times now as a very suspicious piece of evidence… there’s like a blood-like substance on it, they go nuts for it,” Sepaul laughs.

Each night, different details come into play. Sometimes it’s a suitcase prop. Sometimes it’s the oven mitt. Sometimes it’s the way a character looks at another. With so many possibilities, no two nights are alike.

“On any given night, there’s so many possibilities. Motive, evidence — when it all comes down to it, the evidence might not support the motive, but that motive might be strong for that person,” Sepaul says.

The audience can (and often does) catch the detective off guard. “First night, a fan accused me of not really being a Calgary Flames fan,” Sepaul admits. “I’m not a Calgary Flames fan in reality, but I had to be. So I just came up with this phrase: I said, ‘This heart bleeds red.’ It sounded so corny at the time, but I think that’s their motto now”.

Sepaul has been performing Shear Madness for nearly three decades. “I started doing this show in 1998,” he says.

He’s performed it across Canada — Charlottetown, Toronto, Saskatoon — but Calgary’s Stage West is giving the show fresh life.

“Why do you keep coming back to it? I think because it’s set in the town that it is and people get right into the salon with us. We bring them in — the whole place just shrinks — and they’re sitting there helping us solve this case”.

For Calgary audiences, it’s part comedy, part crime story, part improv, and unlike most mysteries, there’s no guaranteed ending.

Shear Madness runs at Stage West Calgary from Sept. 5 to Nov. 9.