Interview: Ian Shaw on The Shark Is Broken, His Father, and Memories of Jaws

It’s been nearly five decades since Jaws hit movie screens in the summer of 1975 and still the image of three men trapped on a boat in the middle of the ocean at the mercy of a great white shark remains potent in our collective consciousness. A new play on Broadway, The Shark Is Broken, evokes memories of the classic Steven Spielberg blockbuster—minus the shark. The comedy drama, now playing at the Golden Theatre, relates the behind-the-scenes story of how the film’s three lead actors—Robert Shaw, Roy Scheider, and Richard Dreyfuss—spent their imposed breaks in between takes over the long weeks when shooting was frequently stalled whenever one of the several animatronic shark models invariably malfunctioned.

The Shark Is Broken is the brainchild of Ian Shaw. His charismatic father, Robert, is the Oscar-nominated actor who’s best remembered for his portrayal in Jaws of Quint, the crusty New England fisherman with an Ahab-like obsession with the killer shark. Shaw co-wrote the play with Joseph Nixon and, in an uncanny meta-theatrical twist, plays his late father as well.

The actor-playwright, now 53, was just nine when his father died at the age of 52 in 1978. He recently spoke with me about creating The Shark Is Broken and shared memories of his dad, a distinguished English stage actor and writer who received a best play Tony nomination in 1969 for The Man in the Glass Booth. Shaw also discussed the emotions he experienced making his own Broadway debut on the same stage where his late mother, Mary Ure, once performed.

It is true that you first got the idea for The Shark Is Broken after seeing yourself with a moustache?

I’ve always looked like my dad, but I don’t often have moustaches. I was doing the faces and the voice and it amused me. It was funny—just thinking I’m about the age that he was and the moustache. But there were several other things that led to the play. I had auditioned for Richard Dreyfuss [in 1994], who was directing Hamlet at the time. I said, “Hello Richard, I’m Robert Shaw’s son,” and I felt like I had knocked the wind out of him. I say sometimes it was quite appropriate because it was like he had seen a ghost—obviously, very Hamlet, you know. I’m not sure that I auditioned particularly well. I certainly didn’t get the part, but I walked away from it thinking, “My goodness, that’s quite a thing that Richard was so perturbed.”

I had loved Jaws for a long time, particularly the magnificent scene where Quint relates the story of the USS Indianapolis [about being on board the wrecked ship that delivered the Hiroshima bomb]. I knew about my father re-writing that scene and then getting too drunk to do it. And then getting it right. Then I did a BBC TV drama documentary [in 2005] about the horrors of Hiroshima playing Colonel Tibbets, the pilot of the Enola Gay who dropped the bomb. I thought this was very odd—that I was playing a character who was receiving an atomic bomb from this albeit fictional character Quint—but the story is true.

So, you know, these strands were bubbling away. Then when I ended up having time on my hands, as actors sometimes do when they’re not working, I sketched out an idea. But I thought that it would be too embarrassing for my family so I put it away in a drawer.

So how did your original sketch turn into this play?

About a year later I was having a drink with a dear friend of mine and I talked about it. He thought it was a brilliant idea. I also talked about it to some other people, and even my family, and they all thought it was a good idea.

Did you have memories to draw on?

It’s not a huge amount of memory for me because I was so little. But I have family who were there and I’ve talked to all of them. Also, there’s a lot of documentation—articles in the papers, interviews with the actual people who were involved—and they talk very candidly about the experience. [Jaws co-screenwriter] Carl Gottlieb wrote a book about it, The Jaws Log. It seems to be a film that doesn’t go away. Everyone wants to shed new light on it. And there’s a wealth of material that my family have on my father—press clippings and interviews and personal things that he wrote. [The play] isn’t necessarily what happened on the set, but I’ve pulled aspects of his personality from his life to put into the character. We had a lot of material. Joseph and I cut a lot of things because we wanted to have maximum impact and also wanted it be movie-length. In many ways, the inspiration was taken from Jaws, because the tone of the movie veers suddenly from one thing to another. We’ve tried to recreate that feeling as well.

Did you have any qualms talking about your dad’s drinking?

Well, he wouldn’t have wanted it to be put on a pedestal and, of course, the audience doesn’t want to be conned in that respect as well. I think that’s what drama is. It’s about the good and bad, isn’t it? Addiction is a sort of tragedy, which is one of the key elements of theater.

Has the story changed in any way from your initial draft?

In the process of writing, I realized it wasn’t just about me and my dad. The feeling I got writing it was that there was a lot of potential for humor and also a slightly more universal connection. And then there’s a sort of generational spin: My father talks about his father, so it’s like we’re lined up in a row. And then, of course, what’s strange is when my son comes to see the show—my son watching me playing my father who’s talking about his father.

Reflecting on Richard Dreyfuss’s reaction when you auditioned for him, were you aware of the degree of animosity between him and your dad?

I had known that there was some difficulty on the set, but I didn’t realize that it was a lingering thing. What is interesting now—and I find this quite touching in a way—is I think Richard has gone full circle and made his peace with it. He went on an Irish chat show and my niece was there, and he spoke very affectionately about Robert. Their relationship was complex. It was definitely not just animosity. I think that Richard felt that Robert approached their relationship in the wrong way, but I think that Robert was trying to school him in a sort of old-fashioned way, or it was partly to try to get some good chemistry. They had different styles of acting. But I think Robert also felt that Richard was a bit vain before he’d earned it. It’s hard for us to come back to 1974, but Richard wasn’t famous in 1974. Robert was relatively well known and Roy was. Richard only had American Graffiti—an incredibly talented man but not a star yet.

Like the second half of the movie, The Shark Is Broken brings the three actors together into very tight quarters for entire duration. Was that your intention?

Three is a great number: Two’s company, three’s a crowd. They’re very distinctive personalities. You’ve got Robert and Richard who were mostly antagonistic, though not all the time. And Roy basically gets on with everybody and is a sort of referee, but there are subtleties to him as well. So you have three very different men at three different stages in their career. That would lead to some very interesting dynamics. It’s also one of the things that we had to think about when we originally produced this for the Edinburgh Festival. We had to pay for it ourselves. You can’t do the whole of Jaws, so you create a story where they’re trapped together. There’s a virtue in those limitations. It becomes a sort of No Exit for the men. We didn’t really use the set in the first week of rehearsal, so when we came to theater, the actors were quite thrown by the fact that we have only got a few feet to work in. Obviously, designer Nina Dunn has created an incredible sky and sea around to suggest the vastness of nature, but the set is very cramped.

Your dad said in an interview that the three actors knew everything about each other’s lives—all their personal stories.

They were very bored and, yes, they knew each other more intimately than you would normally necessarily know on a set. That’s part of the play.

What do you remember most about your dad?

I remember the hugs and the affection. I admired his cheeky sense of humor and his leadership. We followed him around the world and he seemed to be very alive. I know he died young, but when he was with us, it felt like he had tremendous energy and vitality. And he loved children. That’s why he had so many. I’m lucky he loved children because I’m number nine in our lineup.

Did you visit the set of Jaws?

What was interesting with Jaws wasn’t the set itself, but getting to meet the shark. And, in retrospect, meeting Steven Spielberg. But, you know, hanging around sets when you’re a kid isn’t that interesting because nothing’s happening. They’re always doing lighting or waiting for something, and so it’s the equivalent of going to a warehouse when people haven’t started work yet: lots of cables to trip over and lots of soft drinks. And a nice crew, who were friendly to kids. I remember going to see my dad do Force 10 from Navarone and spending all day completely bored and then they were blowing up the dams. There was a big explosion and dust actually everywhere. I was thrilled that all of a sudden something had happened. And then that was it.

You mention your dad’s sense of humor. During the filming of Jaws didn’t he tell a reporter that there was rampant incest at Martha Vineyard?

Yes, he was naughty. You can see it on YouTube, a grainy piece of film where he’s talking about the locals. It’s not very English in a way, his sort of confidence with life and front-footedness. He went on TV one time and said they had given him syphilis for real so he could play Lord Randolph Churchill [in Young Winston] and the press reported it. He was quite wicked like that.

Is it true, as he says in the play, that he never wanted his kids to become actors?

Yes, I think he was fairly clear about the fact. He was very torn about making movies and dealing with unscrupulous people and having to do what he perceived as rubbish. But it’s complicated because he says that he felt like he had to do it to pay for his family. I do believe that if he had been paid more money to write, he would have done that instead. He said that if he could write a great novel, it would be worth more than all the performances he ever gave.

When you presented The Shark is Broken at the Edinburgh Fringe in 2019, did you have any inkling about its future in the London West End and now on Broadway?

Not at all. My original literary agent had no idea that Jaws would still be a thing these days. He was quite out of touch. But actors were constantly talking about this key film and, obviously, the general public. And when the internet arrived, then you’d go on social media and there’s a constant back-and-forth buzz about movie. And it’s not just that. Political cartoons, TV, and film are always making references to it and there are so many directors who were influenced by it. So, I thought, if we can write a good enough play we will be able to tour it—to pack up the set in a van and take it around the country to village halls. I was very confident that we could do that for a couple of years, but I had no idea that most of the highly esteemed producers of Britain would have an interest in it. The show just sold out after two performances, I think, and you had celebrities trying to squeeze in to get a ticket. So that felt very odd, in a good way.

Could we take a moment to talk about your mum, Mary Ure, who passed away when you were six? She was nominated for a Tony in 1958 for Look Back in Anger and also performed on Broadway with your dad in Old Times in 1971.

Yes, well, she did Look Back in Anger in the same theater that I am in now, so it’s very emotional for me. I feel it’s quite a special thing, really. I felt like I had some time with my father. Even though he was obviously cruelly taken away, I feel like I have really good memories of him. Whereas, not so with my mother. I have only shards of memories with her. And quite of few of them are in New York. I can’t remember why, but we were over here in the 1970s for whatever reason. So I want to go back to Central Park and feed the birds because I remember doing that very clearly with her. In terms of grief, I feel I’m in a very solid place. I grieved both of them. You know, this is something I have had my whole life. In the process of writing this play there was a little bit of grief as well, surprisingly. So I feel that I have gone through that process.

What does it mean for you to be on Broadway?

This is—I don’t know—this is the Everest of theater. I feel incredibly privileged to be here. And to be walking the same boards as my mother who was in a play that, you know, changed the course of theater at the time. What I’m saying is that here I am in the same space as her. Of course, this play is not like Look Back in Anger. This was written to entertain. It’s a piece of entertainment that hopefully might run a little deeper that people might originally think.