‘The Shark Is Broken,’ a ‘Jaws’ Comedy, Plans Broadway Run

“The Shark Is Broken,” a comedy concerning the making of “Jaws” that stars the son of one of many movie’s most important actors, will open on Broadway this summer season.

The play is the brainchild of Ian Shaw, whose father, Robert Shaw, performed Quint, the psychotic shark hunter, within the movie. Its movie set was suffering from issues, some exacerbated by Robert Shaw’s ingesting, and the play depicts the fraught relationship between him and his co-stars, Richard Dreyfuss and Roy Scheider.

In the play, set in 1974, the three males are trapped collectively on a ship, managing dangerous climate, (faux) shark troubles and alcohol.

The play started its life on the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in 2019, opened in London’s West End in 2021 after a pandemic-related delay, and had a manufacturing in Toronto final fall. The Broadway run is to start previews on July 25 and to open on Aug. 10 on the Golden Theater.

The play acquired various sturdy evaluations in London, together with from The Evening Standard, which mentioned Ian Shaw “gives what is undoubtedly one of the best theatrical performances of the year.” (The Guardian was extra restrained, saying that “too much of the humor hinges on 21st-century hindsight” but additionally praising Ian Shaw’s “loving and eerily evocative portrayal of his own father.”)

Ian Shaw wrote the play with Joseph Nixon; the manufacturing is being directed by Guy Masterson and produced by Sonia Friedman and Scott Landis.

The play joins what’s shaping as much as be an unusually busy summer season on Broadway. There is already horror (“Grey House”) and farce (“The Cottage”) represented, together with three large musicals (“Once Upon a One More Time,” “Here Lies Love,” “Back to the Future”) and a solo comedy (Alex Edelman’s “Just for Us”).