SPLIT ENDS
SPLIT ENDS, Loading Dock Theatre, Qtopia, 20-24 January 2026.
London-based Australian performer, writer, and director Claudia Shnier is fresh from success with this one-hour show at Fringe festivals in the UK. She wrote and performs Split Ends with a supporting cast of a stick vacuum cleaner, small tweezers, and a pair of scissors. She engages each item in dialogue when not being harangued by her alter ego, herself, on a large screen behind her.
To begin with, technically and performance-wise, Split Ends promises to be a witty and often confronting tour de force, but an abrupt change of pace and style derails the momentum somewhat. It then takes a while to catch up with Claudia as she plunges us into the maelstrom of OCD – not the jokey shorthand version, but the real thing – Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, the affliction that isn’t a bit funny and which can ruin a life. (And, after consulting the always helpful Dr Google, it’s clear that Claudia’s particular compulsion – snipping at the split ends that can proliferate in long hair – is a serious condition with a name, Trichotemnomania, and possible consequences far beyond the simply physical.)
Shnier is an intriguing collection of contradictions as she prowls the stage: pre-Raphaelite mane of hair, smooth-skinned athletic body in skimpy black gym gear, no unwanted hair it seems, and bare feet. She casually confronts the audience, one woman in particular, mad enough to nod off … in the front row. It would be funny if it were not rather scary. A woman with scissors in one hand and a stick vac in the other is not to be trifled with.
The story quickly morphs into something more familiar to many: a relationship that’s impossible to leave, and impossible to stay in. A “love” that’s all about control and subliminal bullying that nowadays has the official title of “coercive control”. Shnier neatly illustrates the close connection between the tools of her compulsion and the irresistible nature of her affair as the stick vac becomes a sex toy, and she sensuously fellates the long-bladed scissors – audible gasps from women in the audience at the latter image!
Among many disturbing ideas and images in Split Ends is the one concerning the sudden appearance on the floor of a black, curly hair, where there should be only Claudia’s own fine, coppery detritus. When it turns out that the Lover is hairy, the word “pelt” springs to mind, and those who find a furry back or thickly carpeted chest nerve-racking rather than sexy will be wriggling in their seats.
Shnier’s confessional is most often intriguing. Uncomfortable revelations are delivered clear-eyed and with menacing charm. Her honesty in the face of mortifying disclosures is compelling as well as uncomfortably entertaining. There can be few in an audience that don’t hear and see aspects of their own inner, hidden lives unexpectedly spotlit for their (in)convenience. It’s a remarkable hour.
Nevertheless, a dramaturg and another pair of eyes, AKA a director, would help make Split Ends even better. Rarely can a writer-performer be sufficiently detached from a work to make the necessary chops and changes that virtually any script needs. “Murder your darlings” was first advised by Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch in 1916: “Whenever you feel an impulse to perpetrate a piece of exceptionally fine writing, obey it – whole-heartedly – and delete it before sending your manuscript to press…”
Meanwhile, Split Ends may well make you rethink your relationship with simple household appliances, and even have you chatting with your tweezers. Yet the brave admissions about the nature of debilitating conditions so ordinary as to be overlooked or dismissed by most make a mostly absorbing show. And a reminder to heed the childhood advice to never run with scissors.
