The 1975 movie Jaws changed cinema forever by introducing the summer blockbuster. The terrifying shark brought in a ton of money, and later on the story of how the movie was made was almost as good. Director Steven Spielberg, only 27 at the time, had to contend with mechanical sharks that didn’t work, and so had to reframe the film and imply shark attacks from the shark’s point of view- which just made the movie scarier. The behind-the-scenes chaos became legend and spawned a musical titled Bruce that opened in Seattle last year.
A different one-act play is scheduled to open on Broadway next month. The Shark is Broken is an obvious title to those who know how Jaws was made, but the play has a different focus. The characters are Robert Shaw, Roy Scheider, and Richard Dreyfuss, the main Jaws actors, together on the fishing boat Orca during the film shoot. Robert Shaw is played by his son Ian Shaw, who looks just like his father and co-wrote the play with Joseph Nixon. The chemistry between the three actors was quite volatile on the Jaws set, friends one minute and clashing chaotically the next.
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Alex Brightman, who plays Dreyfuss, tells Broadway Direct’s Paul Art Smith that the production is “really, truly about fathers and sons, a little bit of alcoholism, ego and the trauma that leads us to who we become.” At the same time, Shaw maintains that it’s primarily a comedy. “We dip into the serious elements, but our intention is to entertain,” he tells the AP.
The Shark is Broken did well at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival and at the West End in London, and will open at the Golden Theater on Broadway on August 10. Read about the production at Smithsonian.
Source: neatorama