Father's Close Shave

A barber’s chair becomes a throne of delirium when a mild-mannered tonsor, Gino Corrado’s dapper yet skittish Signor Crescendo, clips the whiskers of a moustachioed banker whose briefcase is rumored to hold the mortgage on the entire town. One accidental nick, a crimson bead welling like a ruby on white marble, detonates a chain-reaction of social tremors: matrons faint, loafers brag, gossips cackle, and a chorus line of creditors, played by Laura La Plante and Margaret Cullington, waltz through the shop as if it were a ballroom of debt. While the banker swoons, his false whiskers slip, revealing the baby face of a fugitive financier; the barber’s scissors, once symbols of civility, mutate into gleaming Excaliburs of chaos. Into this lathered theater strides Johnny Ray’s street-corner poet, reciting limericks that rhyme with “foreclosure,” while Claire de Lorez’s cigarette girl turns each smoke ring into a semaphore of seduction. The third act is a Keystone-speed chase through foamy lather: shaving cream becomes snowstorm, towels become capes, and the revolving pole spirals like a barber-striped barberello. By the time the razor finally folds, the town has been shorn of every secret—close shave indeed, but the stubble of guilt sprouts overnight.