The Shark is Broken | Newcastle Theatre Royal | 18th March 2025
Invited| Review by Stephen Stokoe
I am always delighted to be in our theatres in the north east but every so often something will come along that really catches my attention and this play was one of them. Not only have I been wanting to see it for over five years since it premiered in Brighton in 2019 but I have kept a very close eye on it as it journeyed up to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival and had a stint on the West End. It never made its way anywhere local until this week.
The Shark is Broken is a play written by Ian Shaw and Joseph Nixon and is set when what would become the first summer blockbuster was being filmed. The film is question? Well there is a very large and toothsome clue in the title of the play. It is of course Steven Spielberg’s epic shark movie ‘Jaws.’
As a huge fan of the film, I was incredibly excited to see this play which covers the interactions between the three main actors of the film during the many down times because the mechanical shark, affectionately known as ‘Bruce’ had broken down. It is very well reported that the tensions between these actors, the mild mannered Roy Scheider (Dan Fredenburgh), Richard Dreyfuss (Ashley Margolis) and long in the tooth British actor Robert Shaw (Ian Shaw) was somewhat fractious at times but I am not going to start the main part of this review with the acting but instead with the set and costumes (Duncan Henderson) because both took the audience straight from the heart of Newcastle straight aboard the ‘Orca’ gently bobbing somewhere off the coast of Martha’s Vineyard and North East America.
For me, just sitting down in the auditorium and seeing a cross section of the ‘Orca’ in quite some intricate detail was enough for the fanboy in me to leap up and down with delight and set the tone for a wonderful evening or escapism. I certainly felt as if I was on the set of Jaws waiting for my call to action. As each of the actors, playing themselves but in the familiar costumes for their respective characters from the film, it was very clear that a huge amount of attention to detail had gone into the design of this production. There were some lovely little added touches to the set which, if anyone has been on a film set, will instantly recognise and smile at such as tucked away cases of well known cola drinks and other paraphernalia to make the actors and crew more comfortable but effectively hidden out of sight for when action is called. A great deal of praise has to be given to the creative and design team for this attention to detail and making the location and the characters of Matt Hooper, Chief Brody and Quint, instantly recognisable. I particularly liked the way the actors make their way into the main performance area which echoes action from the movie. It is a very clever device and did not go unnoticed by me.
And so to the action of the play. The actor perform most of the play in another instantly recognisable area of the set of the film, the living quarters of Quint’s fishing vessel. We meet Matt and Roy first. Fredenburgh is every bit the part in the role of Roy Scheider as Chief Brody and Ashley Margolis is outstanding mimicking the mannerisms of Richard Dreyfuss as Matt Hooper. I suspect that the authors and director of the piece (originally by Guy Masterson with Martha Geelan taking the reins for the UK Tour) have been a little fast and loose melding the characters and the actors into one entity for the purposes of the narrative but they are certainly recognisable and it works very effectively indeed with a good smattering of tongue in cheek banter and topical social commentary to add to the in-jokes about the movie. The story itself is quite simple. Three actors of varying ages and demeanours are stuck on set (in this case – a boat) while the technical team are sorting out a malfunctioning prop which is holding up production. It imagines what the conversations may have been like in the make shift ‘green room.’ There is a great deal of truth to the narrative, I am sure, as the script was co-written by Robert Shaw’s son, Ian, who also plays his own father. His rendition of parts of the USS Indianapolis monologue are eerily accurate as Shaw battles with an overly verbose initial draft of the scene which the late Robert Shaw is known to have re-written and performed so wonderfully in the film.
Much praise needs to go to the lighting designer (Jon Clark) who again, showing some deft attention to detail, performs wonders in recreating the lighting states from the movie that you could easily be fooled into thinking you are watching them as they occur in the narrative of the play.
All three actors are perfect in their role so a big shout out to casting director Ellie Collyer-Bristow CDG. Another mention has to go to original music composer and sound designer Adam Cork who manages to produce a soundtrack that resembles many aspects of John Williams’ magnificent score for the original movie without infringing on any expensive copyrights. It is job very expertly and cleverly done.
This is ninety minutes of sheer joy for any ‘Jaws’ fan but also great fun to watch the relationships between some creative, sensitive and, frankly, bored actors with way too much time on their hands. It does help if you have some understanding of the filming issues with ‘Jaws’ an appreciation of the movie itself, and a familiarity of the characters but I do think the nature of the play would appeal to many more too. I was certainly enthralled from the two deep notes which opened the show to being shown the way to go home at the end.