As the lights go down in the auditorium, the cutaway of the boat, the Orca, recreated beautifully by designer Duncan Henderson, is silhouetted against the moving seascape on the three cinema screens behind (video designer Nina Dunn), in the middle of which appears that familiar triangular fin, accompanied by some of the most famous and eerie music in cinema history from John Williams (influenced greatly, I believe, by Bernard Herrmann)—but then it all stops, as the music winds down and the lights come on. The shark is broken.
Indeed, that intriguing title merely reflects the banal fact that during making of Stephen Spielberg's first blockbuster and surprise hit, Jaws, the mechanical sharks (there were three, all called Bruce) kept breaking down. While sitting around waiting is common for actors on a movie set, stars Robert Shaw, Roy Scheider and Richard Dreyfuss were cooped up together on this tiny boat on the ocean for hours at a time for sixteen weeks for a shoot that was only scheduled for a couple of months rather than relaxing in luxury trailers.
The situation may be banal, but Ian Shaw and Joseph Nixon's script certainly isn't; it bounces along with constant humour in a production originally staged by Guy Masterson for the Edinburgh Fringe in 2019, which went on to the West End and Broadway, and restaged for the tour by Martha Geelan. While the setting was real, the dialogue is, of course, created for the play, although Shaw said, "we looked at things they said in real life, so a lot of the play is in their own words."
As well as co-writing, Ian Shaw plays his own father, Robert Shaw, but this is certainly not a hagiography of the great actor who, in the play, has a few tender moments but is often cruel and demeaning, especially to Ashley Margolis's neurotic, insecure and fame-obsessed Richard Dreyfuss, as well as being an unpredictable alcoholic (he died three years later at the age of 51) who considered this sort of work demeaning. Dan Fredenburgh's Roy Scheider is the intellectual of the group, but here is often cast as the peacemaker.
They pass the time drinking whisky and playing cards and shove ha'penny and talking about what's in the news—Nixon recently resigned after Watergate—as well as what they have done, would like to do or will be doing next. Dreyfuss wonders whether this is the one that will finally make him a star, but he also wants to do Shakespeare and Pinter and looks to Shaw for approval. Shaw gives him Pinter's number, telling him he likes to get calls from people early in the morning and what he really likes is when people have theories of what his plays are about...
Sometimes the dialogue feels a touch contrived, with the heart to heart seeming a bit on-the-nose and more intimate than they would be with one another after what happened immediately before. Also, there are some lines which are telegraphed to get laughs from a future audience with the benefit of hindsight, such as claiming there will never be an American President as immoral as Nixon, or Scheider saying if there is a Jaws 2 he certainly won't be in it, or disparaging remarks about their director's next picture being about aliens and "what next, dinosaurs?"
There is also a running theme of the speech Shaw delivers as Captain Quint about the sinking of the USS Indianapolis by the Japanese during World War II in open ocean, leaving those who didn't go down with the ship vulnerable to shark attacks. Shaw constantly complains about the terrible five-page monologue he is expected to deliver and asks Spielberg if he can rewrite it—he does say at one point he would rather be remembered as a writer than an actor. After an aborted attempt to film the new speech when he was too drunk, the play ends with a faithful and moving recreation of that famous moment in the movie.
Whether or not you know or care about the movie Jaws, this is an original take on a well-known moment of movie history with great performances all round that is funny and entertaining for the whole of its hour and a half—no interval—running time.