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Irish Times
15-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Irish Times
The Shark Is Broken review: Ian Shaw is uncannily like his father in this inventive, irreverent play about the making of Jaws
The Shark Is Broken Gaiety Theatre, Dublin ★★★☆☆ Jaws, Steven Spielberg's film from 1975, was a notoriously chaotic production, riddled with mishaps and other stumbling blocks that paradoxically coalesced into the birth of the modern Hollywood blockbuster. 'Bruce', the shark, one of three malfunctioning mechanical models, seldom worked in the seawater, leaving the film-maker to rely on shadowy glimpses and John Williams's tremendous score. That same iconic soundtrack is playfully referenced in Adam Cork's score for this inventive making-of stage production. In Spielberg's film the mismatched personalities of the shark hunter, Quint (Robert Shaw), the police chief, Brody (Roy Scheider), and the marine biologist, Hooper (Richard Dreyfuss), form a reluctant camaraderie in their quest to kill the murderous fish. The Shark Is Broken merrily mirrors this dynamic in its clever re-creation of the many weeks of downtime that the trio endured. Together they bicker, booze, bond and vomit overboard. READ MORE Ian Shaw, one of Robert Shaw's nine children, plays Robert, investing meaning and metatextuality in the material. (He also cowrote the play, with Joseph Nixon.) The younger Shaw's uncanny approximation of his father is met by the jocular precision of Dan Fredenburgh, playing Scheider, and Ashley Margolis, as Dreyfuss. No tic is unmined. [ Ian Shaw: 'I used to see Dad drink. I was often playing under the table in Irish pubs' Opens in new window ] Over a series of vignettes, stomped out on Duncan Henderson's thrilling re-creation of the Orca, the three actors shift register between Oedipal soul-searching, buffoonery and banter. Fredenburgh's Scheider is the sincere, socially conscious son of a garage mechanic who has nightmares about images emerging from the Vietnam War but loves a good tan. Shaw is a knot of braggadocio, hilarity and wounds. Margolis brings heart and good humour to the swaggering, coke-snorting Dreyfuss – only 26 at the time – who ends up with many of the play's best zingers: 'Nothing good ever happened to any Jew on the water,' he laments. Bobbing along in Nina Dunn's immersive digital re-creation of the stretch of Atlantic Ocean just off Martha's Vineyard where Spielberg expensively shot the film, the prophetic meta-jokes come thick and fast. 'There will never be a more immoral president than Tricky Dicky,' Scheider says of Richard Nixon. Acting as a movieverse Cassandra, Shaw warns that cinema will descend into a muddle of sequels and remakes. Heartfelt and intimate details, ranging from the suicide of Robert Shaw's father to a shout-out to the actor's adopted home in Tourmakeady, Co Mayo, are counterpointed by top-notch film buffery and broad physical comedy. A wealth of research is parlayed, roughly at times, into a proudly commercial three-hander. For all its historical heft, both personal and cinematic, the writing and direction wisely lean into irreverence throughout this 80-minute crowd-pleaser. The Shark Is Broken is at the Gaiety Theatre , Dublin, until Saturday, May 17th
RTÉ News
13-05-2025
- Entertainment
- RTÉ News
Quint's ghost: Robert Shaw resurrected in The Shark Is Broken
There's a common misconception that the credit and blame for blockbuster cinema rests with Star Wars. That the classic movie age died on May 4th 1977, with the release of George Lucas' space opera upon an unsuspecting public. As far as the Hollywood studios were concerned it didn't happen until the following November, with the release of Steven Spielberg's Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Only then did they realise Star Wars wasn't an anomaly: it was a trend. The greenlighting of big-budget bombastic spectacle cinema began in earnest, and arguably has never ceased. In retrospect, it's clear the die was cast two years earlier, when a cloud appeared on the horizon of the beautiful resort community of Amity ('Amity' means 'friendship, you know). A cloud in the shape of a killer shark. The term 'blockbuster' had been around long before the release of Jaws; but it became cemented in the public lexicon forever after the summer of 1975, when people queued around the clock and around the block several times to watch - Steven Spielberg's cinematic rollercoaster scarefest. Watch the original trailer for Jaws Honestly, I don't think it's possible to understate how popular Jaws remains to this day. Arguably, more than Star Wars, there is an all-inclusive, multi-generational love for this film. That's some achievement for one picture (the numbered sequels don't count). No TV shows, billion-dollar mini-series, prequel trilogies: just one two-hour movie. Despite their tidal wave of popularity, none of those franchises have inspired a play about their production. But Jaws has: The Shark Is Broken by Ian Shaw & Joseph Nixon opens at The Gaiety Theatre in Dublin on May 13th. If, as they say, 'success has many fathers but failure is an orphan', the grandfather of Jaws' impact was Robert Shaw and his iconic performance as the gruff shark-hunter, Quint. A world war two veteran with a back-story as thick as his jaw. Shaw himself, a veteran British stage actor, was also the defining James Bond henchman in From Russia With Love, an Oscar-nominated king in A Man For All Seasons, and gave Newman and Redford a run for their money in The Sting. The man had been an intellectual and physical nemesis to some serious players. Now, out in Martha's Vineyard off the coast of Cape Cod, he would face his greatest challenge: boredom. For like the title says, the shark is broken - again. It was much of the time, going by the legend of the movie's production. Watch: Ian Shaw on his play The Shark Is Broken One man who heard these tales directly from the, well, shark's mouth: Robert's son, Ian Shaw, co-author of the play and starring on stage as his father, alongside Dan Fredenburgh as Roy Scheider and Ashly Margolis as Richard Dreyfuss. The elder Shaw was cast as Quint during a fallow period in his film career. Though never out of work, he took the stage more seriously, along with his writing (Shaw authored several best-selling novels during his life). Movies were a means to support his ten children (mostly from two marriages). During the movie's production, the broken shark's now minimal screen time worked in the film and Shaw's favour, with Quint's dark portents and foreboding monologues on land and sea, bringing a tangible primal fear to the now more often than not, invisible threat. Watch: Richard Dreyfuss breaks down after meeting Robert Shaw's granddaughter on The Late Late Show, circa 2010 Shaw's personal nemesis had been alcohol. Being a writer, he kept drinking diaries. One of which, kept during the picture's production in 1974 and re-discovered a few years ago, inspired his son Ian to write the play and inhabited his father, whom he closely resembles. The worldwide success of Jaws made Shaw a wanted man in Hollywood. Some of his post-shark films were pretty good, such as Black Sunday and Robin & Marion. The Deep and The Buccaneers, not so great. But his pay cheques were. This allowed him to take care of his extended family on his farm in Tourmakeady. Co. Mayo. Rober Shaw was barely fifty-one when he died from a heart attack driving home from the shops one afternoon in August of 1978. Spending much of his filmography playing intense, stoic, veteran men of war, sea, politics and whiskey, he was truly a man of all seasons. But in Jaws, a movie for the ages, I venture it's his grizzing Shark-hunting moustachioed Quint, who will be tying sheep-shanks in the audience's collective consciousness for as long as there is cinema. Singing "Farewell and adieu to you fair Spanish ladies… Farewell and adieu to you ladies of Spain… For we've received orders for to sail back to Boston… And so never more shall we see you again."
Boston Globe
05-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Boston Globe
‘The Shark Is Broken' revisits the fraught filming of ‘Jaws'
For cinephiles and ' Advertisement The action takes places on a well-built boat created by Cigar Box Studios Inc. and conceptualized by scenic designer Duncan Henderson. It's outfitted with buoys, barnacle-covered jugs, and buckets of bloody bits. Adam Cork, in charge of sound design and original music, with additional sound by Alex Berg, helped create music along with the whir of the ocean and the creaking of the vessel, while lighting designer Jeff Greenberg mimics the small ripples of placid water and expertly punctuates the more emotional scenes with his work. Advertisement For me, the story, directed by Guy Masterson, doesn't really heat up until about 45 minutes into the play, when the talented actors start to share more about their lives. Hull is excellent as the British and very pretentious Shaw, who spends quite a bit of time picking on the younger, less experienced Dreyfuss who (at least as the play is written) is needy and eager to be a bigger star. There's one line that's telling from Hull's Shaw. As the actors talk of fame, Shaw doesn't seem interested in it. Fame is the byproduct of art, he says. His actual statement is laced with an expletive, but it's evident that being a star and all that comes with it cost him something. The real Robert Shaw died just three years after the movie's release at the age of 51 from a heart attack. In the play, Shaw is drinking or looking for something to drink in most of the scenes. He tapes bottles of alcohol under tables and hides others with Machiavellian guile, and his inebriation manifests in unwarranted monologues and unnecessary fights. But when probed by Silver's Dreyfuss about why he drinks so much, he doesn't have an answer except that his father was a proper drunk. Advertisement Dreyfuss has his own vices to tackle, from taking bumps of cocaine to tackling his low confidence. In the story, Tyson's Scheider, who is always reading the news or sharing an interesting factoid, is the peacemaker between the other two, and could use a break from the bickering and waiting. There's a lot of downtime for the trio, who ponder if the film will be any good, while the crew works on a mechanical shark that the audience never sees. Shaw is convinced that 'Jaws' won't be a hit, and certainly won't spawn any sequels, while Dreyfuss and Schneider search for greater meaning in the script. While it's nice to learn more about these celebrated actors and their time working on 'Jaws,' 'The Shark Is Broken'—packed with comedic zingers, many of which are Shaw's—feels like a 90-minute-long fight. However, it's acutely geared toward — and will likely resonate with — those who remember, love, and hold dear the original film's allure. THE SHARK IS BROKEN Play by Ian Shaw and Joseph Nixon. Directed by Guy Masterson, at the North Shore Music Theatre, Beverly, through May 11. Tickets $45-$65. 978-232-7200,
Boston Globe
30-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Boston Globe
The shark from ‘Jaws' breaks again, but onstage
'It's a big departure for us,' Hanney says of the NSMT, which usually presents musicals in an arena-style setting, 'but everyone is so familiar with the movie, I think they will love this.' Advertisement 'The Shark Is Broken' zooms in on a period during the film's oft-delayed shooting schedule (it ran three months longer than expected) when the three stars — Robert Shaw, Roy Scheider, and Richard Dreyfuss — were stuck together out at sea on a boat called the Orca, with nothing to do and nowhere to go while the mechanical shark (nicknamed Bruce) underwent repairs. 'Filming a movie involves intense periods of stress and long periods of boredom,' says 'The Shark Is Broken' co-writer Joseph Nixon, best known as a British playwright and sketch comedy writer. 'When the people involved are big personalities, like these actors, it makes for great dramatic tension, and quite a lot of humor.' Advertisement 'It's not an unvarnished portrait,' says Nixon. 'Ian found some of his dad's diaries, written during a period when [Robert] was drinking heavily, that also chronicled his clashes with Dreyfuss.' Dreyfuss was in his mid-twenties during the filming, without Shaw's extensive theater training and experience (which included 'A Man for All Seasons,' 'From Russia with Love,' and 'The Sting,' to name just a few films). Dreyfuss had only two films to his credit ('American Graffiti' and 'The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz'), while Scheider had a decade of screen credits under his belt, including 'The French Connection,' 'The Seven-Ups,' and 'Klute.' 'The dynamic on the Orca was kind of 'The Three Bears,'' says Nixon, 'with Shaw as the gruff Papa Bear, Scheider as the calm, conciliatory Mama Bear, and Dreyfuss as the demanding Baby Bear.' The heart of 'The Shark Is Broken,' says director Guy Masterson, 'is the father-son dynamic. The idea that three people from very disparate backgrounds are forced to spend significant time together — remember, the filming lasted 160 days — makes the story work as a great drama even without 'Jaws' as the background.' But anchoring the story with these three well-known personalities, confined together in a small space while making a legendary film, provides 'a smorgasboard for 'Jaws' fans,' Masterson says, 'while also exploring relationships complicated by egos, alcoholism, and fame.' While Ian Shaw has had a successful acting career in England — he's currently touring the United Kingdom and Ireland with 'The Shark Is Broken' — it took him years to focus on his father's story, Masterson says. Shaw and Masterson had been friends for decades, sharing the early loss of their fathers, and the toll of alcoholism (in Masterson's case, he had a father-figure relationship with his great-uncle, actor Richard Burton). Advertisement 'When Ian asked me to read his script about three men on a boat,' Masterson says, 'I loved the context 'Jaws' provides, but the populist aspect makes these characters recognizable and their story universal.' Masterson took 'The Shark Is Broken' to the Edinburgh Festival,' which, he says, provides opportunities to take risks. The play was a hit there, and went on to successful runs in London's West End, and was revised slightly for a production in Toronto, before playing an 18-week run on Broadway where Hanney was a co-producer. The current production has reunited the original production team (including sound and set designers), while casting three new actors who bear a striking resemblance to Shaw (Timothy Hull), Dreyfuss (Jonathan Randell Silver), and Scheider (Josh Tyson). The NSMT's arena stage has been reduced to around 700 seats, all on one side, in a reimagined, proscenium-style set up. The Orca set, where all the action takes place, is realistic, but also modular, easy to dismantle and bring to Martha's Vineyard, where Hanney will remount it at the Martha's Vineyard Performing Arts Center in Oak Bluffs for a two-week run starting July 5, not far from the Edgartown Cinemas, which Hanney owns. 'I hope the popularity of the film and the connection to the 50th anniversary will draw people,' says Hanney. 'But you don't have to know anything about the movie to enjoy this great story of three people trying to figure out how to get along and get their jobs done.' Advertisement This summer's Shakespeare on the Common production, "As You Like It," will run from July 23 to Aug. 10. Cast announced for 'As You Like It' on the Boston Common July 23-Aug. 10 Commonwealth Shakespeare Company returns to the Boston Common July 23-Aug. 10 for its annual free production of Shakespeare. This year's offering is the delightful comedy, 'As You Like It,' in which Rosalind and her cousin Celia flee the court when Rosalind's father is overthrown, taking refuge in the forest of Arden, where they find love, acceptance, and a new community. Founding Artistic Director Steven Maler will direct a cast featuring many Boston-area favorites and CSC veterans, including Nora Eschenheimer ('The Tempest,' 'Cymbeline') and Michael Underhill ('The Tempest,' 'Much Ado About Nothing'), Maurice Emmanuel Parent ('The Tempest,' 'King Lear'), John Kuntz ('Twelfth Night,' 'Macbeth'), Remo Airaldi ('Much Ado About Nothing,' 'Richard III'), and Jared Troilo ('Charles Dickens' 'A Christmas Carol''). While audience members are free to bring blankets or chairs, or rent chairs on site, seats in the CSC Friends Section will be available in late May through a donation to CSC. THE SHARK IS BROKEN Play by Ian Shaw and Joseph Nixon. Directed by Guy Masterson, at the North Shore Music Theatre, Beverly, May 2-11. Tickets $45-$65. 978-232-7200,
Yahoo
05-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Youngstown Playhouse to stage shows at a new downtown location
YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio (WKBN) — The Youngstown Playhouse can seat 450 people at its Glenwood Avenue Theater but next year, the playhouse will be staging shows at another location it's leasing. Youngstown Playhouse President John Cox walked down the main aisle of what was the Oakland Center for the Arts. 'We are getting ready for the playhouse to expand,' he said. Cox and the Playhouse have agreed to lease the theater from Ballet Western Reserve, the owners of the building. 'It just took two nonprofits getting together and talking. We all need to help each other,' Cox said. The plan is to do two to three shows a year starting in March of next year. One show Cox suggested would play well in the theater is 'The Shark Is Broken' — the story of how the movie Jaws was made. 'I want to utilize this place more so for the youth education portion. I mean, not only is running the playhouse but as a pediatrician, the education portion for the youth is really the bigger deal,' he Playhouse used the theater last summer to rehearse Beautiful: The Carol King story. It needs work — lighting, a sound system, a video wall and a good cleaning and painting. Cox is hoping to pay for it with grants and sponsorships. 'I've had two people reach out to me and say we'd like to help. We'd like to put some money down in the downtown. We like this idea,' Cox said. The theater is located on West Boardman Street downtown a block from City Hall in a building that long ago was the Elks Hall — but for the last 20 years has been owned by Ballet Western Reserve. The downtown location is what sold Cox on leasing the space. 'You go to Pittsburgh or New York, you see the lights and the flashing lights and there's stuff to do. It's the ambiance. The atmosphere. And I want to create that a little bit downtown,' Cox said. The working name for the theater is Playhouse Downtown but John Cox is hoping to sell the naming rights as a way to raise money. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
