Review: A Bloodless Postscript to ‘Jaws’ in ‘The Shark Is Broken’

For 9 weeks in 1974, off the shore of Martha’s Vineyard, the taking pictures of “Jaws” was repeatedly delayed by the whims of its temperamental stars. And by “stars,” I imply Bruce.

Bruce was the identify given to the three mechanical predators constructed to simulate the good white shark on the coronary heart of the story. As one after one other grew to become bloated with saltwater or entangled in seaweed and didn’t function or flat-out sank — the crew known as the film “Flaws” — there was little the three equally temperamental human stars may do however attempt (and often fail) to be affected person. Occasionally they puzzled if it won’t have been higher to coach an precise nice white for the function.

After seeing “The Shark Is Broken,” a play about that disastrous shoot, you could surprise the alternative: whether or not it won’t have been higher to forged the film with mechanical people. The actual ones had been almost as glitchy as Bruce. Aboard the Orca, the lobster boat on which a lot of “Jaws” was filmed, the actors Robert Shaw, Richard Dreyfuss and Roy Scheider bickered, brawled, vomited, kvetched, drank, backstabbed and, like Bruce, broke down.

All of that’s faithfully rendered in “The Shark Is Broken,” which opened on Thursday on the Golden Theater, in a manufacturing directed by Guy Masterson. There’s an ideal duplicate of the Orca bobbing prettily on a C.G.I. sea, and costumes minutely matched to the movie. (Duncan Henderson is the designer.) Accents, postures, props and hairstyles are fanatically correct; there’s even a hat-tip (by Adam Cork) to John Williams’s sawing, rasping theme firstly.

But these particulars don’t on their very own create a lot dramatic curiosity. Plots consisting of hurry-up-and-wait not often do. Were it not for its curious meta-story, the play could be little greater than a nice diversion: 95 minutes of cold, toothless, Hollywood-adjacent dramedy.

The meta-story offers it a bit extra chew. Robert Shaw, who performed the Ahab-like shark hunter Quint in “Jaws,” is performed right here by Ian Shaw, who’s one in all his sons. Ian, who may very well be his father’s twin, can be, with Joseph Nixon, the play’s creator. The historical theme of paterfamilias versus prodigal is clearly engaged, additionally organizing the arcs of the characters. Like a dorsal fin poking over the waves, their filial conflicts counsel the story’s darkish undertow.

Unfortunately, the undertow stays largely below in Masterson’s leisurely, self-satisfied staging; you possibly can ask for extra urgency even in a play about filling time. But that is fairly clearly a love letter, if a sophisticated one, to a mum or dad who achieved larger success in the identical area as his son. (A famous stage actor who crossed backwards and forwards to movie, Robert gained an Oscar for “A Man for All Seasons.”)

So though we see him drink himself right into a stupor, ruthlessly bully Dreyfuss (Alex Brightman) to “improve his performance,” and browbeat Scheider (Colin Donnell) about his sunbathing and spirituality, Ian has him winking with gruff allure to take the sting off the awfulness. He additionally makes positive to point out us, in two set items, how superb an actor his father was and thus, in an Oedipal somersault, how superb he’s, too.

One of these set items — the “U.S.S. Indianapolis” monologue from the film, wherein Quint reveals the origin of his shark hatred — can at the least be justified by the story. We watch Robert rehearse it and flub it till, within the play’s final beat, he nails it. But the hardly motivated inclusion of Shakespeare’s Sonnet 29 (“When, in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes”) comes off as overkill, though gorgeously spoken; it’s as if “The Shark Is Broken” had been a quick for Robert’s admission to actors’ heaven, with Gielgud on the gate.

The sonnet’s supposed function is to calm Dreyfuss, who’s having a panic assault, however Dreyfuss, enjoying the marine biologist Hooper within the film, is a full-time panic assault anyway. Brightman’s depraved impersonation, full with Dreyfusian giggles, shrugs and glasses-pokes, highlights the boundless neurosis of a personality who says, “Nothing good ever happened to any Jew on the water.” When he admits he took the function in “Jaws” solely as a result of he was positive, at 26, his profession was over, it feels like he means his life was.

That he and Scheider (because the police chief Brody) are given daddy points helps bind their tales thematically to that of each Shaws. Robert’s father, we be taught, was an alcoholic who died by suicide; Ian’s in fact was Robert, sufficient mentioned.

Still, Dreyfuss’s guilt over not turning into a lawyer and Scheider’s delicate recollections of his father’s beatings really feel underwhelming. In the competitors for messed-up-ness, they lose each warmth handily to Robert, and recede in his wake — particularly Scheider, who has little to do however placate the others. His greatest scene, which the silky Donnell carries off completely, finds him stripping to his Speedo to catch some rays; there aren’t any strains.

That’s telling, as a result of the dialogue total is labored. Through a lot of the longish first scene, the authors stuff résumé excerpts and scraps of again story into envelopes of supposedly informal dialogue. (“I shot this thing last year,” Dreyfuss says, “‘The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz.’”) Casting about for laughs, they use no matter chum they’ll, whether or not it’s borrowed W.C. Fields or tacky backfilled irony. “There will never be a more immoral president than Tricky Dicky,” Scheider says of Richard Nixon, welcoming the viewers’s look-how-that-turned-out response.

In the tip, “The Shark Is Broken” isn’t eager about argument and interpretation any greater than “Jaws” was. When Dreyfuss says the film they’re making is concerning the unconscious, and Scheider posits that it’s about duty, Shaw, as all the time, wins by proclamation. “It’s about a shark!” he brays.

So is the play, in a means, and that’s why it stays diverting sufficient for a summer time on Broadway. Its sharks are human, although. They’re known as sons.

The Shark Is Broken
Through Nov. 19 on the Golden Theater, Manhattan; thesharkisbroken.com. Running time: 1 hour 35 minutes.