Wrestling With His Past. And an Animatronic Shark.

In a rehearsal area close to Times Square, Ian Shaw was speaking concerning the unusual and solemn process of portraying his personal father in a Broadway play that he had co-written.

“You spend most of your life running away from the father,” he defined. “Now here I was, running into the jaws of the thing.” He paused, realizing what he’d stated. “No pun intended,” he added.

Ian Shaw’s father is Robert Shaw, the celebrated British actor, creator and Oscar-nominated star of “A Man For All Seasons,” who went on to play steely villains in “The Sting” and “The Taking of Pelham One Two Three” earlier than his demise in 1978.

Perhaps his best-known movie position is Quint, the seasoned shark hunter of the 1975 blockbuster “Jaws,” whose hardened face hints at a lifetime of harrowing experiences and who delivers a memorable monologue a couple of shark assault he survived throughout World War II.

Ian Shaw, when clean-shaven, might virtually move unnoticed; he has a delicate method and pleasant eyes. But on today in early July, together with his grown-out mustache and sideburns, Shaw, 53, was a lifeless ringer for his father in “Jaws.” This is a deliberate selection for his play, “The Shark Is Broken,” which opens Aug. 10 on the Golden Theater.

The one-act comedy-drama, written with Joseph Nixon, casts Shaw as his father in a fictional depiction of a very difficult day through the making of “Jaws” in 1974.

Confined to a small fishing boat referred to as the Orca whereas the crew contends with an uncooperative mechanical shark, the elder Shaw wrestles together with his misgivings concerning the movie, his historical past of alcoholism and the waning persistence of his co-stars Richard Dreyfuss (Alex Brightman) and Roy Scheider (Colin Donnell).

Ian Shaw has labored steadily in theater, TV and movie initiatives whereas striving to not commerce on the renown of his illustrious father. Describing his personal profession, he stated, “It’s modest, but to be at my age and have lived my whole life being an actor is a kind of a triumph.”

Now, after a number of years of labor on the play and a lifetime of reckoning together with his father’s legacy, he stated he was prepared for a challenge that addressed his lineage head-on.

“You still have to have the conversation about your validity in comparison to your father,” he stated. “As I’ve gotten older and more mature, I feel less burdened about that. The final piece of the puzzle to getting rid of the baggage has, peculiarly, been to walk in his shoes.”

Ian Shaw is certainly one of Robert Shaw’s 10 kids, and the youngest baby he had together with his second spouse, the actress Mary Ure.

Robert Shaw was a celebrated man of letters, a buddy of Harold Pinter (whose play “Old Times” he starred in with Ure) and an completed playwright himself. He additionally made no secret of his heavy ingesting, in an period when such habits have been elementary to the machismo of a era of actors.

Speaking to a reporter who requested him how he stored himself motivated on “Jaws” throughout lengthy manufacturing delays, Robert Shaw responded with a smile: “Well, Scotch, vodka, gin, whatever,” he stated.

He was additionally brazenly resentful of the movie roles that earned him a world fan base (and a profitable dwelling) however took him away from the stage.

In an interview on “The Dick Cavett Show” in 1971, Shaw stated it was no higher to be a busy actor than to be out of labor: “It’s always paradoxically bad, either way. When you’re working it’s terrible because you’re usually doing rubbish, and when you’re not working it’s worse.”

Despite the rugged popularity that his father cultivated onscreen and off, Ian Shaw stated of him, “Privately he was very affectionate and very funny and sort of naughty.”

As he recalled, “One time, a quite dignified guest came to stay with us in Ireland, and he was greeted by the sight of Robert opening the door in his wife’s nightie. He thought that sort of thing was tremendously funny.”

Even so, “there’s a lot of who he was on the screen,” Shaw stated. “You wouldn’t want to confront him directly in an argument.”

The actor described boisterous household dinners held at lengthy tables the place he would generally be clamoring for his father’s consideration. “I would be dominating a little bit,” he stated. “And he would come over, pick me up and just put me outside the room.”

But the household was struck by tragedies. Ure died from an unintended overdose of alcohol and barbiturates in 1975, and Shaw died of a coronary heart assault three years later.

Ian Shaw, who’s now married with two kids of his personal, was simply 8 years previous on the time. But, he stated, “I felt I had time with him. Up to that point, I didn’t feel shortchanged.”

Guy Masterson, the director of “The Shark Is Broken” and a longtime buddy, stated Shaw’s household historical past has offered skilled challenges.

When they’d kick round concepts for doable collaborations, “Ian came to me and said he didn’t want to do anything with his dad, because he looked like him,” stated Masterson, who has recognized the actor for some 25 years. “Every time he walked into an audition, people would expect Robert Shaw, and he was at a disadvantage.”

At first, the youthful Shaw balked on the notion of a biographical play about his father. “I felt like it would be an impossible thing to pull off,” he stated.

But over time, and with the encouragement from mates and colleagues like Masterson, he grew extra snug. As the challenge germinated, Shaw additionally observed the theater turning into extra receptive to productions with cinematic origins, such because the performs “The 39 Steps” (tailored from the Hitchcock movie) or any variety of musicals primarily based on up to date hit films.

For analysis, Shaw learn books like “The Jaws Log” by Carl Gottlieb, one of many movie’s screenwriters, which chronicled the manufacturing’s quite a few issues. He additionally checked out interviews his father gave on this period, making an attempt to channel his unapologetic, forthright voice.

“In a world where those types of interviews weren’t stage-managed, Robert would sometimes say things that were quite shocking,” Ian Shaw stated. “It didn’t feel like he was trying to get his next job. He was just trying to speak from the heart.”

He additionally reviewed a ingesting diary that his father stored within the early Seventies, and which certainly one of his sisters later shared with him. “It gave me a baseline about how he felt about his alcoholism,” Ian Shaw stated. “He had tried to quit and couldn’t do it. He wanted to concentrate on his writing and it was interfering with that.”

Before the play arrived on Broadway, “The Shark Is Broken” had a short tryout in Brighton, England, in 2019, and ran later that summer time on the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. It additionally performed on the Ambassadors Theater in London’s West End through the 2021-22 season.

In the Times Square studio, the play’s complete set match right into a small portion of the room: a cramped recreation of a bench and desk contained in the Orca. Shaw stated he might think about himself touring the mess around in a van, “taking it to every village hall in England and making some money doing that.”

The sense of claustrophobia is meant to amplify a number of the well-documented battle that occurred behind the scenes of “Jaws,” just like the on-set friction between Shaw and Dreyfuss: In the present, as in actual life, the seasoned Shaw regards Dreyfuss as inexperienced and entitled, whereas Dreyfuss worries that Shaw’s ingesting has gotten uncontrolled.

Within the boat’s confines, fictionalized conversations and monologues present the characters humorously squabbling and questioning if their cinematic efforts will quantity to something. They additionally discover the characters’ depths, as when Robert Shaw displays on his personal father, who was himself an alcoholic and died by suicide when Shaw was a toddler.

Donnell, a star of tv (“Chicago Med”) and musical theater (“Violet”), stated he felt a powerful obligation to assist Shaw notice his targets for the play.

“There’s almost a sense of duty to fulfill his vision, and to try to breathe as much life as we can into these roles,” he stated.

“You’re getting to witness somebody taking a deep dive on some difficult memories,” Donnell stated. “I would imagine there is a bit of catharsis in not only having created the piece but getting to embody his father every night. I’m sure there is some dueling going on in his brain.”

Brightman, who not too long ago performed the title character within the Broadway musical “Beetlejuice,” stated that Shaw’s involvement gave the play permission to be candid in its depiction of the “Jaws” stars.

“Shows like this can be watered down and glorify a person for who they weren’t,” he stated. “This play actually goes the other way and shows the three of them without a soft focus at all. I really think that we see three very flawed egomaniacs.”

But the emotional draw, Brightman stated, is the area it provides Shaw to attach together with his father in actual time.

“I don’t know how many people would ever get an opportunity like this, to both honor his dad and show him with the capital-F flaws of a person,” he stated.

When he prepares to play his father in “The Shark Is Broken,” Shaw stated his rituals embody training his voice as he places on his Quint costume. “I believe him to be quite fearless, so when I’m getting into character that’s one of the feelings that I absorb,” he stated. “I’m very front-foot and energized, which is quite a liberating feeling.”

But that could be a sensation that solely lasts about so long as the efficiency. When it’s over, Shaw stated, “I do tend to quite quickly revert to who I am, which is probably a healthy thing. I’m not my father. I’m a different man.”