Barebones Show Boosted by Boasting Jordan, Cannon and Shannon and Director Stevo Attract
By SHARON EBERSON
In Pittsburgh, 2025 is the year that Jaws strikes twice.
Dun dun … dun dun… dun dun dun dunnnnnnnnnnn …
The shark tale that launched the summer blockbuster will celebrate 50 years of terrifying beachgoers with a re-release in movie theaters in August. Starting May 30, the play The Shark Is Broken, inspired by the clash of personalities on the set of Jaws, will make its local debut, safely landlocked in Braddock.
Before a single performance, it’s already making waves.
For the first time, Patrick Jordan’s 22-year-old barebones productions company has sold out the entire run of a show before it was due to open, prompting a three-show extension.
The Shark Is Broken re-creates the stormy interactions among the movie’s three stars – Robert Shaw as Quint, Richard Dreyfuss as Hooper and Roy Scheider as Brody – In what Jordan compares to Waiting for Godot, but on steroids. The trio’s disparate personalities become amplified during the interminable pauses for the infamously malfunctioning mechanical shark known as “Bruce.”
The play was co-written by Joseph Nixon and Ian Shaw, son of the late Robert Shaw, and based in part on the elder Shaw’s personal journals – Ian played his father in the show’s 2023 Broadway debut.
(Image: Sharon Eberson)
The prospect of a return to a Jaws summer isn’t the only thing attracting Pittsburgh theatergoers to Braddock. There’s also the prospect of the trifecta of Patricks, well-known for their wide-ranging careers in the regional theater scene: Patrick Jordan as Shaw, Patrick Cannon as Scheider and Quinn Patrick Shannon as Dreyfuss.
With just a couple of social media posts, noted Jordan, the first round of tickets were gone.
“It’s a wonderful problem to have,” he said.
The boat is helmed (Note: there will be a lot of these; they are unavoidable) by Steve “Stevo” Parys, a local filmmaker directing his first play, and a Jaws devotee since he first saw the movie at age 13.
While the rest of us were cowering in our seats, tween-age Parys was studying the work of a bright young director named Steven Spielberg, delivering on his second feature film.
It was Parys who challenged Jordan to not just produce the play, but to portray Shaw, who was rocking facial hair to outdo Shaw’s and mastering the actor’s wayward British-Scottish-American accent.
“I knew the play was good, and I’ve been an enormous fan of the movie – it’s kind of what got me interested in making movies when it came out 50 years ago,” Parys said. “And just everything timed out well.”
SHARK TALES GALORE
Parys has instructed the cast to be true to the characters without strictly doing imitations of the real-life actors they portray.
However, in preparation, everyone involved has done a deep dive into their characters, the movie, the goings-on behind-the-scenes – the wide world of Jaws, for aficionados, is there for the asking, from merchandise to YouTube.
Parys at one time started to collect memorabilia, but it quickly became too much. He and Jordan go back and forth lamenting the loss of items from the set, such as the Orca 1 and Orca 2.
They repeat the lore that Spielberg one day went to visit the Orca 1 on the Universal Studios lot, and discovered it had been destroyed. The Orca 2 was sold to a private owner, who put it on display. It too was eventually destroyed, reportedly by neglect and fans, who wanted to come away with a piece of Jaws history.
Everyone, it seems, has a Jaws story.
Among the surprises, Jordan said, was finding out that the movie was rated PG.
The discussion drifts to the rating system – PG-13 was added in 1984. It is noted that even without the gore of the movie, The Shark Is Broken’s salty language would certainly demand an R rating today.
The stories of the mechanical shark that would not snap to attention on cue, along with open hostilities between Shaw and Dreyfuss, with Scheider often the level-headed peacemaker, were fairly easy to study.
“But there’s a lot of things in there I didn’t realize,” Jordan said. “In the play, they all at one point open up about their childhood and their family and things like that, and I didn’t really know a lot of that. So a lot of that was new and really, really fascinating, and just in time for Father’s Day.”
GETTING THE GANG TOGETHER
Besides the machinations involved in Jordan securing the rights for The Shark Is Broken, finding a time when the foursome could work together required a spreadsheet.
“I think we sent Steve and Patrick our entire lives,” Quinn Patrick Shannon said of merging their schedules.
To make it work, rehearsals start at 9 a.m.
“It’s a lot to bite off – no pun intended,” said Parys.
Shannon joined rehearsals immediately after the run of Pittsburgh Musical Theater’s Waitress, which ended on May 18. The director of the PMT Conservatory, he had played the part of Ogie after a hiatus from the stage.
“Jersey Boys [in 2023] is the last thing I did on stage, so doing Waitress into this, I had to work a lot of stuff out … but I never get to do a play. So my big thing is, I get to do a very good play. I had to make it work.”
Cannon takes on this role while he also is director of The Da Vinci Code, which runs through June 1, 2025, at Little Lake Theater.
“It’s an embarrassment of riches, but it’s certainly a lot to navigate,” he said.
Then, to nods all around, he added, “The love of the game makes it a lot easier. But honestly, and I think that everyone in this room would agree that, thank God for supportive partners who are selfless and take a lot off our plate and afford us these opportunities.”
Shannon and Cannon (as if three Patricks weren’t confusing enough) were castmates for Pittsburgh Public Theater’s 2018 Hamlet, and all have known each other for many years.
For instance, Cannon, wrote the movie Mulligan, directed by Parys, with Jordan playing his father. Jordan has been in many of Parys’ projects, either on commercials or as an assistant director of Pittsburgh-shot TV and films … and so on.
You may not know director Stevo (not the Jackass guy) by name, but you likely know his work. Parys’ impressive credits includes Sudden Death, Striking Distance, Dogma, Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, American Rust and more. Parys also directed the DVD version of The Chief for Pittsburgh Public Theater.
IN THE BELLY OF THE BOAT IN BRADDOCK
The pun-filled conversation with Parys and the cast of barebones’ The Shark is Broken was conducted alongside the Tony Ferrieri set that re-creates the claustrophobic quarters of the Orca in barebones’ 70-seat black box theater.
Perched on a seat, awaiting its cue, is a large head of a familiar-looking shark, which will be photo ready for theatergoers. Also during the run of the show, the Brew Gentlemen’s Braddock Public House that fronts the theater on Braddock Avenue will have Jaws-themed cocktails on the menu.
Just a glance at the set makes it easy to imagine the three Oscar-nominated actors at loggerheads, with their various egos, addictions and backgrounds sending up flares and fireworks.
As the actors who play them and their director piled into the narrow seats, the thought that came to mind was, this definitely is a case of not needing a bigger boat. (Yes, that was necessary.)
Although the play does not call for the blood seen on the waters in the movie, Jordan has been giving up some of his own on the fresh-cut wood.
“For whatever reason, I’m getting just jacked up with splinters,” Jordan said, holding up his hand and saying, “That’s another one!”
His director and castmates playfully protest that Jordan is the only one among them being attacked by the set.
Quoting a line from The Shark Is Broken, Patrick Cannon then chimed in with the gentle reminder: “It’s the grit in the oyster that makes the pearl.”
TICKETS AND DETAILS
The Shark Is Broken is at barebones productions’ Braddock black box theater, 1211 Braddock Avenue, Braddock, PA 15104, March 30-June 15, 2025. The added shows are 8 p.m. Wednesdays, June 4 and 11, and 2 p.m. Saturday, June 7. Tickets: visit https://www.barebonesproductions.com/shark.
Categories: Our Posts, Show Previews, Venue
Leave a ReplyCancel reply