It’s been 20 years almost to the day since Manoa Valley Theatre introduced Hawaii to the wacky interactive comedy of “Shear Madness.” MVT’s second staging of the show lives up to the high expectations set by its predecessor. Comedy fans who enjoyed the comic acting of Stefanie Anderson, Dion Donahue and Gregory Scott Harris in 1998 will find that Miles Phillips, the director of this production, has assembled an equally talented ensemble for 2018.

Comedy drives everything. Some bits are vintage vaudeville-era exchanges like the “You can say that again” routine (Character A says something. Character B says “You can say that again,” meaning they agree with Character A, and so Character A says it again).

There are also malapropisms, non sequiturs, sight gags and rapid-fire references to people, places and current events such as “collusion,” Taylor Swift, the Hawai‘i Symphony Orchestra, MVT President Jeff Portnoy, famed cellist “Yo Ma-Ma,” the Paris Hilton Hotel, the benefits of switching to GEICO and the problems caused by “the city spending all its money on rail.”

All this comedy takes place in a hair salon. Someone kills the annoying woman who lives on the second floor of the building, but which of four suspects is guilty of the crime?

Could it be the stereotypical gay hairdresser Tony Whitcomb, played with unflagging over-the-top energy by Sean Koegel in his MVT debut?

Or Tony’s colleague Barbara DeMarco? Another strong character performance by Honolulu’s improv comedy queen Shannon Winpenny.

Perhaps the mysterious Eddie Lawrence (Steve Wyman), a self-described dealer in “used antiques”? At times, Wyman seems to be channeling Groucho Marx.

Or is it the wealthy Mrs. Schubert, played by Fabienne Flandre-Herold with what could be occasional shadings of Melania Trump?

Bumbling police detectives Nick Rossetti (Alan Shepard) and Mikey O’Brien (Dan Connell) fumble their way through the investigation. Shepard and Connell earn their share of laughter as well.

Midway through the investigation the houselights come up and the detectives invite the audience to join them in questioning the suspects. Keen-eyed members of the audience will catch the suspects lying — or appearing to lie — about what they were seen doing earlier in the show. The suspects’ explanations for the discrepancies could help clear them or might heighten suspicions of their guilt.

Eventually the audience votes on “whodunnit,” and the story continues with the winner of the vote revealing how and why they committed the crime.

Barbara DeMarco was the killer the night I saw it. Any one of the other three could be the killer tonight.