By SHARON EBERSON
According to the play The Shark Is Broken, the three human stars of Jaws were often at each other’s throats as they huddled inside a boat and waited, waited, and waited some more for the movie’s biggest star, a mechanical shark named Bruce, to float.
If a bigger boat than the movie’s Orca was needed, it was because cramming three bored men with whale-sized egos, addictions and hostilities into a small space was bound to leave blood, figuratively speaking, on the waters.
The just-opened barebones production of The Shark Is Broken, in the intimate Braddock black box theater, provides a fly-on-the-wall view of men not at work. It is a bitingly funny nostalgia trip, just right for the 50th anniversary of Jaws, and an emotional feast for three local actors to sink their teeth into.
in The Shark Is Broken, for barebones productions. (Image: Lou Stein)
Left to their own devices for days on end, veteran actors Robert Shaw (played by Patrick Jordan) and Roy Scheider (Patrick Cannon), with relative newcomer Richard Dreyfuss (Quinn Patrick Shannon), are mostly up to no good. Boredom will do that.
The play by Shaw’s son, Ian Shaw, and Joseph Nixon is heavy on nostalgia for the time when Richard Nixon (no relation) had just resigned, director Steven Spielberg was a TV guy who had one film under his belt, and movie sequels were not nearly as pervasive as they would become.
The Shark Is Broken also leans into the dynamic of raging alcoholic Shaw constantly baiting the insecure Dreyfuss, with the studious Scheider playing referee.
It is tempting to lump “the Patricks” together as performers, but each has a distinct interpretation of the real-life actors, as captained by director Steve “Stevo” Parys.
As Jaws was inventing the summer blockbuster, Dreyfuss – Hooper, in the film – had not yet cemented his status as a pop culture Everyman. Shannon nails the persona that would continue to develop in films such as Close Encounters of the Third Kind and The Goodbye Girl. From the telltale laugh and nervous ticks, you know exactly who this guy is, while gaining insight to his monumental inner struggles.
Among the three, two-time Oscar nominee Scheider (The French Connection and All That Jazz) had perhaps the lowest public profile. His perpetual tan is made light of here, but in Cannon’s straight-forward delivery, we get to know Scheider as an even-tempered intellectual, quick with an explanation of minutiae, but also, how the shark should work, and why it doesn’t.
Constantly stirring the pot of discontent is the cantankerous Shaw, who hides bottles throughout the ship to maintain his alcoholic swagger. There’s no hiding that Jordan’s own idiosyncrasies are married to the character of Shaw. It goes deeper than the epic facial hair, to Jordan’s knack for finding the humanity behind a tough-as nails façade. The character is meant to combine an eruditeness that would lend itself to Shakespeare and Harold Pinter, with the mentality of a bar-room brawler who runs off to get drunk with Thornton Wilder.
Dreyfuss, 26 years old and seemingly starstruck by Shaw, is the whippersnapper of the trio. Shannon shines in showing his desperation to get in Shaw’s good graces, hoping to someday play a Shakespeare or Pinter role. However, Jordan’s Shaw amuses himself with belittling Dreyfuss, pranking him and calling him “boy” at every turn.
In the background, the waters off of Martha’s Vineyard are seen as calm or stormy, reflecting the turmoil inside the boat.
Tony Ferrieri’s wood-carved scenic design, though tight in seating, gives each character room for physicality, including an unexpectedly funny sunbathing scene by Cannon as the notoriously tanned Scheider.
The intimacy of the set and venue are keys to the production’s success. There’s a feeling of all hands on deck, laughing along when it is warranted and willing calm to prevail when inner storms erupt.
Within the 90 minutes of raging against the machine that is Bruce and at each other, there also are revelations of father abandonment and childhood traumas that link the three men. Ian Shaw had access to the journals of his father, also a writer, to help re-create the strained relationships aboard the now famous movie set.
In a moment that puts the impact of what they are creating into perspective, Shaw’s character predicts that Jaws will make money, as all his bad movies do, and then be forgotten. He muses about what could be next after sharks? Dinosaurs?
Little did anyone know that Jaws would be the start of summer movie mania, spawning one of composer John Williams’ best-known themes, catchphrases galore, and catapulting sharks to the top of the movie-monster food chain.
As the beach season gets under way, you may be wondering, “Is it safe to go back into the water?” It’s safer still, but a harder ticket, to head to Braddock and test the waters with the fitting love-hate behind-the-scenes-story of the making of one of the greatest monster movies of all time.
TICKETS AND DETAILS
The barebones’ production of The Shark Is Broken is mostly sold out throughout its run, through June 15, 2025, at the barebones black box theater in Braddock, at 1211 Braddock Avenue. Tickets: https://www.barebonesproductions.com/shark . Notable: The experience begins in the lobby, with a replica Amity Island sign and a shark head, perfectly placed for selfies. Aside: I saw Richard Dreyfuss in a Shakespeare play, four years after he filmed Jaws: He was in the midst of playing Cassius in Julius Caesar at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in 1978, when he was awarded his Oscar for The Goodbye Girl. At the time, he was the youngest actor to win an Academy Award, slightly younger than Marlon Brando had been, both at age 30. Adrian Brody is now the youngest, at 29, for The Pianist.
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