“Dur duh. Dur duh. Dur duh DUH duh…” ring out the ominous notes of John Williams’ iconic Jaws score at the opening of the play.
Dan Fredenburgh as Roy, Ian Shaw as Robert and Ashley Margolis as Richard | Photo © Manuel Harlan
In a seemingly tranquil sea, a shark’s fin cuts an inexorable menacing swathe through the water, in a merciless search for fresh blood. And then – it splutters and sinks pitifully under the surface. Sadly the shark is once more broken.
This annoyingly regular mishap affected the filming of Spielberg’s Jaws among many other delays, causing its intended two-month shoot to balloon into 159 days. And stuck in the middle of this endless waiting around were the three lead actors on the boat, confined for eleven weeks in the cramped cabin with just each other, some cards and lots of booze for company.
Tensions understandably begin to flare while the three mechanical shark models (all named Bruce, after Spielberg’s lawyer) undergo their endless repairs.
Such an extraordinary true story is the bloody meat and bones of The Shark is Broken, and who better to tell the story than co-author Ian Shaw, the son of Robert Shaw who was one of the long-suffering trio?
Ian visited his dad on the film set at the age of five and, after reading Robert’s diaries many years later, brought the story to stage in dazzling tragi-comic style with co-author Joseph Nixon. Though there is some dramatic licence taken, the events and discord are all true, resulting in many laugh-out-loud moments amidst the endless torpor.
The casting is impeccable. Ian Shaw plays his father as the grandstanding whisky-sodden world-weary sovereign of the stage he was, with rasping voice and endless put-downs, never shying away from his less sympathetic character traits but always having the audience on side.
He and Dan Fredenburgh as Roy Schneider are genuinely uncanny in their physical likenesses, to the extent that it is easy to forget they are not the actors they are playing; Fredenburgh fully captures Scheider’s restraint and level-headedness with flashes of vanity.
Ashley Margolis as Shaw’s nemesis Richard Dreyfuss cannot match the others for physical resemblance, but makes up for it with endless nervous energy, fidgeting as a distraction from his inner demons, with Dreyfuss’ suitably whiny voice.
The three have superb chemistry, despite the bullying rivalry going on between Shaw and Dreyfuss, and in many respects act like hetero equivalents of the three leads in Priscilla Queen of the Desert, with the reasonable unflappable one (in this case Scheider) acting as referee between the alcoholic world-weary middle-aged trooper and the annoying young attention seeker.
And when the tension between them is given full rein during a competitive shove-ha’penny match and when Dreyfuss disposes of Shaw’s liquor, you wonder whether they will all survive the shoot.
Director Guy Masterson keeps a firm hand on this cramped boat’s rudder with excellent pacing which wrings all the bitter humour from the script, whilst Duncan Henderson’s design of a cutaway of the Orca boat is a marvel, bringing a cluttered chaos to these men’s hours and creating an unlikely cramped claustrophobia on the open ocean which heightens the stakes.
The boat seems afloat thanks to Nina Dunn’s ever-changing video design, giving us a still-yet-restless seascape complete with occasional birds and lurches of the waves, all captured within frames of celluloid. It’s a spellbinding effect.
This is a fairly short play (95 minutes with no interval) and in many respects is a very niche subject – how many young people are interested in Jaws these days? But the play also deals with alcoholism, the yearning for fame and artistic achievement, and the building of bonds in the most unlikely of environments.
It’s a masterpiece of claustrophobic melancholic comedy which will hold you spellbound, and after Shaw’s beautifully accurate USS Indianapolis monologue at the close, a real desire to see the film afresh.
Hilarious, sensitive and suspenseful, it’s a sea voyage fully worth taking, even if you do risk facing an attack by Bruce the shark. But of course that won’t happen because he’s probably still broken.
The Shark is Broken is showing at Theatre Royal Bath until 8th March. Box office: 01225 448844.
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Reviewer: Steve Huggins
