Shear Madness, the longest-running show in the history of Washington, DC's Kennedy Center, will turn 12 on Aug. 12. The improvisational whodunit opened for a 12-week run Aug. 12, 1987 and has been playing ever since.

Washington's Shear Madness is the third longest running production of a non-musical in American theatre history. The first two? The other productions of Madness in Boston and Chicago, respectively.

This mounting of Paul Portner's farce transports the action of the play to present day Georgetown and the Shear Madness Hair Styling Salon at 3229 P Street, NW. The performance culminates nightly with an audience vote on who is guilty and who isn't.

In the last 12 years, Washington's Madness has employed 150 actors and used on stage:

5,129 canisters of shaving cream
62 hair brushes
568 emery boards
37 blow dryers
5 barber chairs
9,362 Tic Tacs
622 bottle of nail polish
4,190 ounces of shampoos and conditioners
509 cans of hair spray
101 bottles of stage blood. Tickets are $29-$25. For more information on the Kennedy Center, visit the Center's website at http://www.kennedy-center.org.

-- By Christine Ehren and David Lefkowitz