If you think the great white shark in Jaws was a horror, shooting the movie may have been worse. Making the first film shot in open water (off Martha’s Vineyard), 26-year-old Steven Spielberg was chronically over budget and over schedule. Boats drifted into frame, bad weather halted filming, and cameras were getting soaked. Plus, the mechanical shark, nicknamed Bruce after Spielberg’s lawyer, kept malfunctioning. Which is why the shark, ostensibly the star of the film, appeared in very few scenes. The Shark is Broken imagines the film’s three stars—Robert Shaw, Roy Scheider, and Richard Dreyfuss—passing time on the Orca, talking and squabbling and drinking and waiting. Co-written by Ian Shaw (Robert’s son) and Joseph Nixon, the play premiered in 2019 in Brighton, England, and then went on to the London stage. In New York, Shaw reprises his role as his father, whom he says he worshipped. Guy Masterson directs. —Jensen Davis