Review: PURE Theatre sinks satirical teeth into making of “Jaws”
Repost of Maura's review in Charleston City Paper
Anyone growing up in the 1970s in a coastal town like Charleston may recall the unprecedented dread of the beach in the wake of Jaws, the 1975 thriller directed by Steven Spielberg that pitted three men against an outsize predator. Their fates, and the film itself, rested in the title character’s treacherously sharp denticles (that’s shark speak for ‘teeth’).
Now we come to find out that life on the Orca, the New England fishing boat manned by the actors who portray the trio on the hunt for the Great White menace, was no day at the beach either. Like a seafaring version of Jean Paul Sartre’s famously fraught triangle in the existential play No Exit, actors Roy Scheider, Richard Dreyfuss and Robert Shaw were just as adept at getting under one another’s skin as the finned public enemy No. 1 was at ripping into it.
There also appears to be no exit for the three in The Shark Is Broken, the sharply performed, absorbing play by Ian Shaw and Joseph Nixon that packs its own brand of comedic bite. Directed by Sharon Graci for PURE Theatre in its Southeast premiere, the show is now running at Cannon Street Arts Center through Feb. 15.
The rub of the play is this: Rather than mess with real shark-wrangling, the crew of Jaws built a mechanical creature, affectionately named “Bruce,” which was forever on the fritz. This attenuated shooting well past the production schedule, and the actors got on each other’s last nerve as delays mounted.
The storytelling dives deep, about as insider as you can get, on the machinations of this legendary blockbuster. Ian Shaw, the son of the actor Robert, co-wrote the play and portrayed his father in the show’s 2019 premiere in Brighton, England, before its 2023 Broadway run.
At PURE, The Shark is Broken is a rolling, engaging, 90-minute intermission-free ride on the beleaguered yet wildly effective boat set dreamed up by scenic designer Bristol Barnes. And the three-hander makes marvelous hay of the acting chops of core ensemble members. With impressive aplomb, Rodney Lee Rogers takes on the formidable Shaw, a seasoned, booze bottle–swigging British thespian who signed on for Captain Quint. But Bruce kept malfunctioning and Shaw’s mercenary side gig evolved into a role of mind-numbing eternity.
David Mandel channels to great effect a fame-fixated, jittery Dreyfuss still luxuriating in his surprise star turn in American Graffiti. In Jaws, he portrays ichthyologist Matt Hooper; on set he is always scheming his ascent into the Hollywood stratosphere. Mandel successfully conjures Dreyfuss’s trademark gestural ticks, remaining in character without veering into caricature.
It seems Shaw could get a bit tetchy with Dreyfuss’s constant twitch, becoming peevishly paternal about the young actor’s Beverly Hills ways. As the two clash generationally and culturally, R. W. Smith steps in as the ever-level Scheider, aka police chief Martin Brody. He mainly wants to Zen it atop the vessel while working on his tan, or drolly-lob factoids at his fellow actors. Among those is the notion that you cannot tame a shark, something that perhaps could be applied to the irascible Shaw, particularly when Dreyfuss self-righteously tries to separate his co-star from his hootch. When it comes to the younger’s aim to be viewed as a serious actor by the likes of Harold Pinter, Shaw has no qualms about sinking his teeth into such misguided ambition.
But in some ways the upstart likes of Dreyfuss and Spielberg get the last laugh in the form of time and endurance. Shaw regularly quips about how Jaws is destined for obscurity, something he’s likely banking on so as not to sully his board-trod reputation. Broken or not, that damnable behemoth fixed its jaws onto our collective memory, not to mention the Hollywood machine, and won’t let go. But in this wry, watery, wholly entertaining world, Shaw may very well be looking downward, raising his glass as they have the last laugh.
For tickets and information, visit puretheatre.org.
I absolutely love seeing Maura’s beautifully written reviews on Substack. The Arts Community is so lucky to have her in Charleston!