Theater Review: ‘The Shark is Broken,’ But This Production Is Not

As you have no doubt heard by now, “Jaws” is celebrating its 50th anniversary this summer. Steven Spielberg’s film is the benchmark for the term “blockbuster.” Though Peter Benchley’s book is set in a fictional Long Island town, the movie was filmed on Martha's Vineyard. Spielberg was praised for his Hitchcock-like style of building suspense by keeping the shark invisible for much of the first hour of the film, with the wise interjection of John Willams’s music score, though in reality much of that unseen suspense can be based on the fact that the mechanical shark kept breaking! 

 In 2017, Robert Shaw’s son Ian Shaw found his father’s drinking diary, and the glimmer of an idea was born. His father had been drinking heavily and wrote about his clashes with Dreyfuss on the “Jaws” set. That broken shark, nicknamed Bruce after Speilberg’s lawyer, led to many hours of off time on the boat for the three main actors: Robert Shaw, Roy Scheider and Richard Dreyfuss. And it’s easy to believe there was friction between the young upstart Dreyfuss of “American Graffiti” fame and Shaw, an English Shakespearean actor with film credits like “The Sting” and “A Man For All Seasons.” 

 Ian collaborated with writer Joseph Nixon years later to create the play “The Shark is Broken” to showcase those behind-the-scenes antics. 

“The heart of the play,” says director Guy Masterson, “is the father-son dynamic.” 

The comedy is set on the ocean in the stern of the Orca, shark hunter Quint’s boat, where the three actors kibitzed as Bruce was made operational. For a “Jaws” aficionado, the play is crammed with little gems and insights of the popular film and book, but anyone will enjoy the interactions of the three playing Shaw, Dreyfuss and Scheider (Timothy Hull, Jonathan Randall Silver and Josh Tyson). All physically look like and sound like the actors from the movie. It’s uncanny. 

 No one then knew how popular the movie would be and that we would even be celebrating it 50 years later. And at the time, little did they know that Spielberg’s idea of filming on the actual waters off the island would lead to problem after problem. The play delves into the three actors as they argue, joke around and then bond over the time they were wasting (the shooting schedule ran three months longer than expected). There’s a lot of drinking and gambling, too. Shaw and Dreyfuss butt heads constantly, and Scheider finds himself flung into a referee role. The dialogue is quick and humorous. If you love “Jaws,” you will love this play. 

 Producer Bill Hanney saw the play have a successful run in England and on Broadway and most recently at his North Shore Music Theatre in Beverly, which is where I saw it. This summer the production will be at the Martha’s Vineyard Performing Arts Center from July 5 to 20 as part of the anniversary festivities. The creative team of Duncan Henderson (set design), Rebecca Glick (costume design), Jeff Greenberg (lighting design), Adam Cork (sound and original music) and Alex Berg (additional sound) are behind all productions, with Arthur Atkinson (production stage manager) and Ingrid Pierson (assistant stage manager) contributing to the Martha’s Vineyard show. 

Tickets are available online now. The 95 minutes fly by as you laugh and chuckle as the three banter, scream and roughhouse. Seeing it on the island where the movie was made will only add more to the show.

As the promotional material says, “Return to the waters where it all began. Three actors. Two giant egos. One broken shark…what could possibly go wrong?”