The central conflict of The Shark Is Broken, the tragicomedy about the making of Jaws, premiering at the Golden Theatre on Thursday, does not involve man and beast so much as beastly men. Co-authored by Joseph Nixon and Ian Shaw, the 53-year-old son of the late British actor and Jaws star Robert Shaw, the play tells the story of the discord that erupted among the movie’s three male leads while on location on Martha’s Vineyard in 1974.
Robert Shaw, Richard Dreyfuss, and Roy Scheider got increasingly on each other’s nerves as the shoot dragged on for three extra months, partly because the picture’s mechanical sharks perpetually malfunctioned. Much of the play’s appeal lies in Ian’s virtuosic impersonation of his father, who died when his look-alike son was eight. “I was very nervous playing him,” Ian states. “The role was fraught with dangers. I didn’t want to embarrass the family. How would it be possible to get the tone right?”
