Martha’s Vineyard, 1974: shooting on ‘Jaws’ has stalled. The film’s lead actors – Robert Shaw, Roy Scheider and Richard Dreyfuss – are stuck on a boat, at the mercy of foul weather and a faulty mechanical co-star. Awash with alcohol and ambition, three hammered sharks start to bare their teeth…Directed by Guy Masterson, THE SHARK IS BROKEN reveals the hilarious behind-the-scenes drama on one of Hollywood’s biggest blockbusters.
I suppose if you knew nothing about Steven Spielberg or “Jaws” or the blockbuster’s three stars — Robert Shaw , Roy Scheider and Richard Dreyfuss – you might still be able to appreciate “The Shark Is Broken” as a kind of Beckett-light pop play about three characters who spend most of their time waiting for something to happen. But it’s the reflected cinematic glory in this modest stage comedy that surely explains why, four years after its month-long run at the Edinburgh Fringe festival, it has opened tonight on Broadway. The production is not an embarrassment. All three actors give uncanny impersonations that sometimes shade into nuanced portraits. The design team does an impressive job with a subtly animated, ever-changing backdrop for the fishing boat of rolling sea and cloud-streaked sky.
All of that is faithfully rendered in “The Shark Is Broken,” which opened on Thursday at the Golden Theater, in a production directed by Guy Masterson. There’s a perfect replica of the Orca bobbing prettily on a C.G.I. sea, and costumes minutely matched to the film. (Duncan Henderson is the designer.) Accents, postures, props and hairstyles are fanatically accurate; there’s even a hat-tip (by Adam Cork) to John Williams’s sawing, rasping theme at the start. But these details do not on their own create much dramatic interest. Plots consisting of hurry-up-and-wait rarely do. Were it not for its curious meta-story, the play would be little more than a pleasant diversion: 95 minutes of bloodless, toothless, Hollywood-adjacent dramedy.
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