Three men in a boat - plus a malfunctioning shark and a load of laughs

When Jaws hit cinemas in the summer of 1975, it was a blockbuster success unlike anything the film industry had seen. The story of a killer shark terrorising a small American town set the template for summer flicks for decades to come, but its behind-the-scenes drama has become the stuff of similar legend: mechanical sharks broke down, boats sank, actors argued fiercely and the script changed day by day.

The Shark is Broken, which embarks on a UK tour after smash runs in the West End and on Broadway, is set in those long, tense gaps between filming. It focuses on the relationships between the film’s three lead actors, Roy Scheider, Richard Dreyfuss and Robert Shaw, who found themselves stuck on a small boat called the Orca for 16 weeks with little to do except drive each other crazy.

The play’s co-writer and actor Ian Shaw admired the work of two of those actors, Scheider and Dreyfuss, but it was the third, Robert Shaw, playing grizzled seadog Quint, that particularly interested him, and for a very good reason: Robert Shaw was Ian’s dad.

“I’d spent my life trying not to be associated with my dad, as most children of famous people tend to do,” says Shaw. “You want to carve your own path, so I was wary of that. But I’m obsessed with films and I’m obsessed with the story of filmmaking. This was a particularly juicy story. I just imagined three men stuck on this boat, marooned out in the water. Something about that idea appealed to me. I’ve reached a point now where I guess the comparison with my dad doesn’t matter so much. I’m also at the same age as my dad when he was doing Jaws, and I just feel less sensitive about the comparison now.”

But almost as soon as he started thinking about the idea, he lost faith.

“I thought it might be in poor taste to play my father and to portray him like that, so I put it in a drawer. It wasn’t until a while later that I had a pint with a friend who thought it was a good idea, so I looked at it again. My wife and family all thought it was interesting. So I decided that I should take the risk.”

Along with co-writer Joseph Nixon, Ian dug into the thrilling history of a film that was very familiar to him. There’s a photograph of a five-year-old Ian on a studio lot peeking under a sheet that covers the body of a vast mechanical shark called Bruce. Ian spent a lot of time visiting his father on film sets as a young boy, he explains, “and they were mostly very boring places, with nothing happening”. But when they pulled the sheet off Bruce, he was “incredibly impressed and a little scared”. He remembers meeting 28 year old Spielberg, too: “he tousled my hair, and I remember thinking that he was too young to be in charge of my dad.”

Ian didn’t just want the play to be a rehash of the famous stories from the making of Jaws. He wanted it to be an exploration of different types of actors, different outlooks on life, as well as addiction, and the idea of father figures. “We looked at things they said in real life, so a lot of the play is in their own words.” His dad is portrayed as a witty, erudite, charismatic man - but also an alcoholic, who could be cutting and cruel.

“I wanted to get into his character. He was an artist in pursuit of the truth, and he felt it was a slight tragedy to be doing work that was so commercial. He agonised about that.”

Meanwhile, as well as writing the play, Ian knew he wanted to play his own father, too. But it was a daunting prospect. In 1975, Robert Shaw was already one of the most acclaimed actors of his generation. He’d had a stellar stage career in the UK, appearing in many Shakespeare roles and most of Harold Pinter’s plays, combined with roles in beloved Hollywood films like A Man For All Seasons, The Sting and The Taking of Pelham One, Two, Three.

Robert Shaw died in 1978, when Ian was just eight years old, and while Ian had maintained a professional distance from his dad, in his personal life he was a devoted fan as well as a loving son.

“I adored my father, and I thought he was a wonderful actor. I knew his work so well that to some extent playing him felt like putting on a glove. I felt like I'd never researched a character as thoroughly as I had Robert.”

The Shark is Broken opened at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in 2019, and Ian thought it might attract a few devoted Jaws fans. Instead, it earned glowing reviews. It was performed in a pair with another play, but proved so popular - queues snaking along the streets outside the venue, celebrities lining up to get tickets - that they cancelled the other play in order to put on more performances of The Shark is Broken.

“It was a complete shock. I really didn’t expect it. Before I went on stage for the first time I thought it was possibly going to be a car crash. I didn’t know if audiences would find it funny, or if they would think it was distasteful, me stepping into my father’s shoes and showing his flaws. I had many sleepless nights before we opened, worried that my family would be offended.”

Instead, audiences were delighted by Shaw and Nixon’s script, seeing the world of Jaws come to life with Duncan Henderson’s beautifully detailed replica of the Orca. ‘You’re going to need a bigger theatre,’ the critics said - so a West End run followed, and then the play transferred to Broadway to the John Golden Theatre. That was the theatre where, in 1958, John Osborne’s seminal play Look Back in Anger received its American premiere, starring acclaimed actress Mary Ure - who happened to be Ian’s mum.

“She died when I was very young, and though I feel like I really remembered my dad, I don’t really remember my mum terribly well. But performing on that stage was a particularly proud moment.”

Now The Shark is Broken is embarking on a UK tour, and Ian is getting ready once again to don the moustache and cap that bring out the striking resemblance to his father.

“It's a funny thing, being there in the dressing room and looking in the mirror before I go on, doing a bit of the famous Indianapolis speech from the film that my dad helped to write, just to make sure that I feel in character. I'm not somebody who believes in spiritual things very much, but there's definitely a dialogue between me and my dad before I go on stage. It's not like anything I've ever done in my life before.”

The Shark is Broken is touring from 23 January 2025 through until 17 May, ending in Dublin at the Gaiety Theatre. Book tickets below!