I was unable to get a ticket for The Shark is Broken when it played Edinburgh Fringe in 2019 but I did see Ian Shaw’s very funny companion piece of Runyon short stories, Guys Dolls and Pies so I knew I had missed a treat. It’s been a long wait but finally, this brilliantly funny and insightful look into the world of the three main actors on the iconic Jaws movie has finally made its way to the West End for a short season offering a short sharp antidote to Lockdown and a reason to get out to live theatre.
It is very much of its time and only an older generation will easily recognise the period setting music that fills the auditorium as you take your seats before the show. The 1974 hits of David Essex, Paper Lace, Suzi Quatro, The Rubettes, and ABBA takes us back to the time the film was being made by a twenty-five-year-old Steven Spielberg off the coast of New England. The brilliant set design by Duncan Henderson and amazing video projections by Nina Dunn transport us into a small boat on the sea with waves lapping its sides and seagulls flying overhead where the film’s stars rest between takes, The familiar Jaws theme opens the show, and you really hope that the shark will make an appearance amongst the waves but of course, it does not because “Bruce”, the shark, is broken again. As the unseen crew offstage try to repair it or replace it, we eavesdrop on the banter between the three familiar faces as they wait in the boats small cabin to start shooting again.
Ian Shaw, the son of actor Robert Shaw who played the shark hunter Quint, plays his father and co-wrote the piece with Joseph Nixon based on his father's diaries. He is the dominant figure in every scene, cajoling and bullying the others to fill the time while drinking heavily from whisky and rum bottles concealed around the boat. His two set-piece speeches when he tells of Robert Shaw’s alcoholic father (the actor’s grandfather) and his speech from the film about surviving the attack on the USS Indianapolis in which many crew were eaten by sharks are both spellbinding highlights of the show.
