3 – 8 March
One of movie history’s “trivia tickles” is that Jaws’ animatronic shark constantly broke down. This made its appearances strategically minimal – creating a greater sense of menace – but the actors waited for hours between shoots, while the tech team slogged to get “Bruce” to cooperate.
The Shark is Broken lifts the lid on nine weeks of what Roy Scheider (the utterly convincing Dan Fredenburgh) calls “the time between the takes” (“it’s not the takes that take the time, but the time between the takes that takes the time.”) Stuck together with so little to do for so long, they must pass the time without murdering one another. It’s a close study of male friendship and family relationships, human ambition, and – ultimately, nihilistically – whether Hollywood, Shakespeare or any of our concerns will (to quote them quoting Casablanca) “amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world.”
Writers Ian Shaw (who also plays his own father, Robert Shaw) and Joseph Nixon really enjoy and exploit this moment in history. The audience loved their jig around our present-day knowingness and the trio’s predictions for the future. There can never be a President as mendacious as Richard Nixon; Jaws might flop – or – they joke – have a sequel; Spielberg’s mad to do a film about aliens next – “then what – dinosaurs?!” These laughs are spread generously across the show, as their bonds deepen – and stresses bob to the surface.
At the centre of it all is Robert Shaw (Ian Shaw) who played the movie’s shark hunter, Quint. Quint comes across as a wild, drunken sailor, but in a powerful scene on the way to ‘peak shark’, we learn he survived an horrific shark attack. Here and in the film, when the we hear the story of shark’s dominance over humans, both trios of men reach ‘an accommodation’ with one another. They talk, listen, and understand.
Quint was telling a true story and it’s relevant to the play. The USS Indianapolis had just delivered parts for Little Boy, an atomic bomb destined for Hiroshima. The tanker was then torpedoed by the Japanese. It sank in 12 minutes, taking 300 men down with her. Another 850 went into the shark-filled sea. After four days, just 316 were saved.
We see the scene attempted twice, then brilliantly delivered. Each attempt acts as a marker of the men’s personal development and group relationship: Dreyfuss moves from immature boy to slightly more mature man; Scheider accepts that he’s always cast as an authority figure, and Shaw shows his tender side, opening up about his drinking, and how his writing matters more to him than fame, merchandise or a likely film future of sequels and remakes. When Dreyfuss (played uncannily by Ashley Margolis) suggests Jaws is all about the subconscious, and Scheider says it’s about the state ignoring its responsibilities, Shaw says, “it’s about a shark.” It seems reductive and stroppy, but when you remember he’s told you sharks have survived earth’s four extinction events, maybe after all, he’s nailed it.
The last words must be for the outstanding creative team. The wonderful background seascape makes you sometimes feel we’re bobbing about (set design, Duncan Henderson; video design Nina Dunn, lighting Jon Clark). The non-copyright-breaching music and sound is brilliantly done by Adam Cork, and the whole was originally directed by Guy Masterson, and on tour by Martha Geelan.
★★★★☆ Gill Kirk, 4 March 2025
Photography credit: Manuel Harlan
