Things go from bad to worse and from hilarious to hilariouser when a nincompoop barber accidentally sticks a pair of pointy scissors into a customer’s ear and then hides the body in the barber shop storeroom in Clara Rodriguez’s nonstop fun fest Pointy Scissors, a Theatre West World Premiere.

 The nincompoop in question is Arnie (Steve Young), who had the misfortune this morning of being asked by a certain Carlos to trim his mullet, and though Arnie initially fibs to his sister Betty (Angela Bruning) that he “didn’t draw blood or anything,” it soon comes to light that when he went in to clip a little clump of hair sticking out on one side, he “sort of scratched” Carlos’s cheek with the scissors.

One thing then led to another, and there was, as Arnie puts it, “a kerfuffle” (i.e., Carlos went on the attack), upon which “the scissors kind of ended up in his ear,” an accident that can hardly be blamed on Arnie because, as he so rightly puts it, “I don’t think scissors should be so pointy.”

 Who-or-whatever is to blame for Carlos’s unfortunate demise, the body must be gotten rid of asap, though before Betty and Arnie can set about making a concrete plan, who should show up at the shop but a distraught Sammy (Richy Storrs), there to inquire whether either of them has seen a guy with a mullet, a guy to whom Sammy owes money and was supposed to meet this morning, but then his car broke down and if Sammy doesn’t pay Carlos what he’s owed, his liver will be removed from his body and fed to the raccoons.

And if that weren’t already enough, Arnie and Betty’s much-married sister Deborah (pronounced De-BOHR-ah and played at the performance reviewed by understudy Lea Roman) pops by in need of Betty’s immediate help in altering the wedding dress (their mother’s) she’ll be wearing when she weds her boyfriend of under two weeks, a gynecologist, sorry make that a gastroenterologist named Alessandro.

Will Arnie and Betty be able to get rid of Deborah so that they, aided and abetted by immediately-smitten-with-Betty prison parolee Sammy, can stuff Carlos’s body into Sammy’s mom’s van and dump him in a lake where, according to Sammy, people dump bodies all the time?

 And how will the arrival Anibal Silveyra as a character whose identity the Pointy Scissors program gives away (but I won’t) and that character’s sexy, miniskirted Serbian girlfriend Molly (Monika Vidakovic) further complicate matters, as if they weren’t already complicated enough?

For that you’ll just have to head over to Theatre West for the latest bit of madcap madness from playwright Rodriguez, whose “decidedly oddball sense of humor” I raved about when reviewing her Normal Noises a few years back, and who proves every bit as hysterically funny in Pointy Scissors.

Doubling as director, Rodriguez delivers pitch-perfect performances from her all-around fabulous cast, beginning with Bruning’s deliciously frazzled Betty, the play’s one sane-ish character.

 Roman makes for the most entertainingly self-centered of brides-to-be, Silveyra is a hoot and a half as a character for whom the adjective bizarre would be an understatement, and Vidakovic spits fire like nobody’s business as the improbably named Molly.

Best of all are the weirdly wonderful Young (is milquetoast Arnie a nitwit, an imbecile, and a moron all mixed into one, or is he just sweetly, genuinely naïve?) and a scene-stealing Storrs, whose manic star turn as Sammy recalls SNL’s Jon Lovitz in Tommy Flanagan mode, minus the lies.

Ernest McDaniel earns kudos times three as scenic, lighting, and sound designer (I love the way Arnie’s barber shop seems stuck in the 1960s or ‘70s), and the show’s uncredited costumes fit each character’s quirks to a T.

Pointy Scissors is produced by Bonnie Kalisher Dukes and Theatre West. Alexandria Sanders and Roman are assistant directors. Leesa Freed is stage manager. Philip Sokoloff is publicist.

There are certain writers whose comedic quirks are instantly recognizable. (Tina Fey is one of them, Larry David is another.)

To that list can now be added the name Clara Rodriguez. No one else could have written Pointy Scissors quite like she has, and blessed with actors who get her unique sense of humor and fly with it, Rodriguez’s latest bit of inspired comical silliness is a bona fide Theater West winner.

Theatre West, 3333 Cahuenga Blvd. West, Los Angeles.
www.theatrewest.org

–Steven Stanley
November 21, 2025

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Tags: Clara Rodriguez, Los Angeles Theater Review, Theatre West