“The Shark is Broken,” or, three actors in a boat off New England

The George Street Playhouse presents, for its spring offering, the hit New York comedy The Shark Is Broken by Ian Shaw and Joseph Nixon. It’s a funny, bitchy backstage story, a behind-the-scenes look at the creation of a classic movie.

The Shark Is Broken is set on the boat Orca, parked off the coast of Martha’s Vineyard. Stephen Spielberg is doing location shooting for his latest project, a man-versus-nature thriller titled Jaws. His three stars — seasoned, bombastic Robert Shaw (Jeffrey M. Bender), young, insecure Richard Dreyfuss (Max Wolkowitz), and professional, conciliatory Roy Scheider (Jason Babinsky) — are on the boat for long hours, days on end. They wait for the skies and the seas to be just right. They learn pages of new dialogue sent to them by their director. But most of all, they wait for “Bruce,” the mechanical shark that is their nemesis. “Bruce,” it seems, is temperamental: run by compressed air, it’s more buoyant than it should be, but lower air pressure causes it to take on sea water, which breaks down its mechanisms. All of “Bruce’s” stunt doubles have the same problems, causing massive delays in shooting.

Dreyfuss frets over his career, feeling he should have achieved bigger fame by now. Shaw, a seasoned stage and film actor, prefers passing the time aiming copious amounts of alcohol-fueled professional insults at Dreyfuss’ career ambitions and pipe dreams of acting on stage in a Shakespeare play. Scheider prefers nothing more than to read the New York Times or a good book, but finds himself having to play referee for his two co-stars. The time drags, the weeks pass, and one wonders which of them will be left alive after the filming is completed.

Peter Flynn directs his actors with a light touch, making sure the humor inherent in the play never turns heavy-handed. While the script by Nixon and Shaw (Robert Shaw’s real-life son, who played his father in the play’s original West End run) does tend to be a little on the flat side, Flynn seems to have encouraged his actors to dive deep into their characters. Their solid performances balance each other expertly.

Credit goes to George Street’s scenic designer Anne Mundell for creating the good ship Orca, cut away to reveal decks both above and below. One of the play’s highlights is a sudden thunderstorm which sends the three actors on a whirling, nearly uncontrollable ride off Cape Cod. The Orca, set on a giant turntable, comes alive in its storm-tossed gyrations, enhanced by Alan C. Edwards’ lighting design, Joanna Lynne Staub’s sound design, and the sky and sea projections across the stage’s backdrop by Adam J. Thompson.

The Shark Is Broken is fast, and funny, and better than I thought it would be. It’s brisk and filled with just enough detail that you find yourself wondering how much of it is true and how much is a product of the writers’ imaginations. But in the end, it just doesn’t matter when you’re presented with a solid story on an imaginatively crafted set, acted by three extremely talented performers and directed with skill and heart. We all know what the result was (da-dum….da-dum….da-dum da-dum…), but if you want a behind-the-scenes look at how it all got put together I recommend seeing The Shark Is Broken before its all-too-brief run ends!

The Shark Is Broken is presented by the George Street Playhouse at the New Brunswick Performing Arts Center through May 18, 2025. For more information or to purchase tickets, go to georgestreetplayhouse.org.