From the moment you enter the John Golden Theater, The Shark Is Broken plunges you back to the summer of 1974, even if you weren’t alive at the time. A decrepit fishing boat, paint peeling and laden with junk, fills the stage against a video of the bobbing ocean projected on the giant cyclorama. And as the strains of The Rubettes (“Sugar Baby Love”) and Paper Lace (“The Night Chicago Died”) fill the playhouse, you realize with a huge smile that yes, that’s the Orca – that’s the vessel that sea dog Peter Quint sailed out of Amity Island armed with harpoons and hate. And this .…this is Jaws.
But of course it’s not Jaws. As they used to say about Beatlemania, it’s “an incredible simulation” that purports to take us behind the scenes of Steven Spielberg’s famously delayed, rewritten, and over-budget potboiler that, improbably, became an instant megahit.
Events at the Martha’s Vineyard location are absurdly subject to the vagaries of star “Bruce,” the non-functional and phony-looking mechanical maneater of the play’s title. Stuck on the sidelines No Exit fashion, the human topliners kill their wait time in games, teasing, and gossip. They share apprehensions and confidences. And, oh yes, they drink their asses off, such that tempers constantly threaten to come to blows and often do. All in a day’s Hollywood work.
[Read Steven Suskin’s ★★★★☆ review here.]
It’s all very “in,” with airy references to “Steven” and “Gottlieb” (co-screenwriter Carl) and assorted musings about the acting trade. But none of it would matter if we resisted accepting Ian Shaw, Alex Brightman, and Colin Donnell as, respectively, Robert Shaw, Richard Dreyfuss, and Roy Scheider.
Happily, they all succeed in spades. Young Shaw, who with Joseph Nixon co-wrote the play for premieres in Brighton and the Edinburgh Fringe, is (as widely publicized) his carousing, melancholy dad to the life. The lurching walk, the gravelly growl, the sinister grin, the hands that look like they could tear a co-star in two, elicit gasps throughout, and all of that astonishment is earned.
No less amazing is Brightman’s evocation of Dreyfuss at his most angsty: bearded and bespectacled, cursed with restless-leg syndrome that bespeaks restless-actor syndrome. He prowls the deck fueled by resentment and ego, alternately boasting of his career prospects and paralyzed by fear of failure. Brightman’s impressive past work in School of Rock and Beetlejuice did not, I confess, prepare me for the poignancy of this performance. Meanwhile, Donnell has fewer quirks to work with as the bookish Scheider, but succeeds in conveying the actor’s quiet strength and wry common sense.
Further praise ought to begin with director Guy Masterson’s deft modulations of rhythm to mimic the boredom of moviemaking without boredom’s infecting those of us watching it. The Orca’s amusing authenticity is the work of Duncan Henderson, while Nina Dunn created the varied projections of the Atlantic that can actually make you feel a little seasick from time to time. Jon Clark’s lighting design, and Adam Cork’s sound and original music (almost-but-not-quite John Williams’s unforgettable theme) also make notable contributions to the passage of time and mood.
A through-line involves each man’s knotty father issues, given extra weight because we know our co-author was one of nine (eventually 10) kids of the man he’s portraying. Still more seriousness comes out of Quint’s speech about surviving the U.S.S. Indianapolis tragedy, unquestionably the film’s human high point. On the lighter side, Shaw and Nixon take advantage of plenty of 20/20 hindsight, as when Shaw gloomily predicts their epic will be a turkey, or when Scheider comments on Richard Nixon’s Watergate woes to predict “There will never be a more immoral president than Tricky Dicky.” (Knowing laughter both times.)
In the end, though, the comfort that The Shark Is Broken brings, and it truly is a most enjoyable 95 minutes, stems from the canny way in which it channels Jaws itself. The play’s version of Robert Shaw, when you come right down to it, is Peter Quint, the grizzled veteran baiting and blasting the young whippersnapper whom you can call Dreyfuss or Matt Hooper, it’s all the same. Meanwhile bemused, decent Roy “Chief Brody” Scheider attempts to make peace between mercurial shipmates as he decides on the next fateful phase of his career.
Watching The Shark Is Broken, then, is not unlike diving into a boatload of outtakes from a beloved classic. If you’re anything like me, you eat it up like it’s popcorn.
The Shark Is Broken opened August 10, 2023, at the John Golden Theatre and runs through November 19. Tickets and information: thesharkisbroken.com
