The Shark Is Broken at Ambassadors Theatre

Just as Jaws was one of the many stars in Spielberg’s glittering career, The Shark is Broken was similarly shining at the Edinburgh Fringe in 2019. Dramatising the downtime aboard the Orca between Richard Dreyfuss, Robert Shaw and Roy Scheider during takes, The Shark is Broken is as much of a theatrical success on its West End transfer as it was in Edinburgh.

The star of this show is the script. When it’s not the humorous interplay between the three cast members driving the comic impact, the writers propel the laughs further through the dripping sardonic wit of Robert Shaw, post-modern irony or sharp one-liners. Without doubt, scriptwriters Ian Shaw and Joseph Nixon have already created a contender for one of the most hilarious scripts of the decade.

The excitement of performing such material seems to get the better of Liam Murray Scott (Richard Dreyfuss), who has the occasional technical slip-up in line delivery, but it does not detract from the otherwise tight-knit chemistry between him, Demetri Goritsas (Roy Scheider) and Ian Shaw (Robert Shaw), which is the foundation of this fantastic comedy.

On many occasions, the audience would be forgiven for thinking this is a sincere and accurate verbatim performance from 1974, but, while the actors take the plaudits, Carole Hancock’s hair and make-up skills and the symbiosis of Jon Clark’s lighting and Nina Dunn’s video design are just as paramount in creating an artistic and authentic illusion of the film’s star actors and off-shore location.

The collective strength of these elements also helps to overshadow some of the contrived elements in the piece that, like the frail shark prototype “Bruce”, mildly threaten to thwart the success of the production. In particular, the decision to interweave Quint’s famous Indianapolis speech into a few scenes of the script lacks purposeful dramatic intention. No matter how strikingly similar Shaw looks to his father’s character, and how skilful Guy Masterson is as a director, the famed speech feels more like a fish out of water than the powerfully resonant force it purports to be. 

This trivial matter aside, though, nothing else is faulty about The Shark is Broken. Forget pantomime – theatregoers would do well to celebrate a post-Covid Christmas by taking themselves to the Ambassadors Theatre this Christmas instead.

Francis Nash

The Shark Is Broken is at Ambassadors Theatre from 9^th October until 16^th January 2022. For further information or to book visit the theatre’s website here.

Watch some behind-the-scenes footage for the production here: