Combine intimate acting, an intriguing set, and a script based on the infamous filming of the real-life very first summer blockbuster, and the play you get is The Shark Is Broken.
It’s the 50th anniversary of Jaws, which opened in June 1975, and aside from re-watching the film, there’s no better way to honor the event than seeing the West Coast Premiere of this play, onstage now through February 22 at Ensemble Theatre Company in Santa Barbara.
(You can even take your picture inside the jaws of a giant inflated shark that graces the entrance to the New Vic Theatre on Victoria Street, if you’re into that sort of thing.)
Co-written by Ian Shaw, the son of Robert Shaw who played Quint in the film, the play is a fictional album (snapshots, really) of the times that the film’s three main actors—Shaw, Richard Dreyfuss, and Roy Scheider—are stuck on a boat together waiting for their scenes to be called.
The mechanical shark is malfunctioning, the production is beset by weather woes (it’s being shot on the ocean, not in a tank on a soundstage in Hollywood) and there’s a lot of frustration in the air.
Add egos, alcohol, and drugs to the mix and, well, the situation is ripe for witty banter, a game of chance or two, and a couple of confrontations that liven up the proceedings.
The Shark Is Broken is an entertaining 95 minutes, with no intermission to break its continuity. It seems more than anything else to want to reveal something about Shaw, Dreyfuss and Scheider, three character actors at different stages of their performing lives.
Trying to remember the last time an audience might sit through a production with so much conversation and so little physical movement, the closest I could come is My Dinner with André, Louis Malle’s classic 1981 film in which two men share thoughts about theatre, art, and life over an almost two-hour dinner in a New York cafe.
Both the film and the play depict real-life celebrities in a fictionalized way. Both rely almost entirely on the spoken word—although Shark does have a few instances of actions speaking louder than words, notably brief physical confrontations between Shaw and Dreyfuss and one wordless scene in which Scheider tries to relax between film takes.
Under the direction of Pesha Rudnick, Will Block as Dreyfuss, Gildard Jackson as Shaw, and Adam Poole as Scheider give it a good go, working some of the real-life actors’ already well-known character flaws into amusing bits of behind-the-scenes chemistry.
Block, Jackson and Poole so resemble the actors they are portraying that they disappear into their roles with a fluidity that is quite impressive. Their voices—Jackson’s growly and English-accented, Block’s punctuated by a high nervous giggle, Poole’s steady and even-handed—lend refined nuances to their characterizations.
This show’s production design—depicting a boat out on the ocean amidst everything from calm seas to thunderous storms—is among the best ETC has presented (so much so that a warning is in order if you are inclined toward seasickness). The combined work of scenic designer Fred Kinney, lighting designer Michael Klaers, projection designer Elijah Frankle, and sound designer Jazer Giles is truly breathtaking.
So go ahead and celebrate the shark—a 50th anniversary only comes around once—with The Shark Is Broken. It’s a perfect way to applaud the birth of a blockbuster, and reward the hutzpah of a theatre company willing to tackle a production almost as complicated as a mechanical shark.