Theater Thursday - The Shark is Broken

We were given complimentary tickets to The Shark is Broken for review purposes. Any and all opinions expressed here are our own.

What: The Shark is Broken

Where: John Golden Theatre 

             252 W. 45th St.

             New York, NY 

Who: Recommended for Ages 14 and Up

When: Through November 19, 2023

Me- I enjoyed The Shark is Broken. It was very funny. The acting was really good. It was so cool that one of the actors was actually playing his own father. He wrote the play too. 

Alex Brightman looked so different than I have ever seen him before! It was kind of weird. His part was similar in some ways to other roles he has played. He had the same kind of crazy energy he usually does. Yet, he was also very different in this role. I enjoyed it.

 I had never seen the other two actors before. However,  I enjoyed their performances as well.

Although I have never seen any of the Jaws movies, that did not take away at all from my enjoyment of the show. I never felt like I didn't know what was going on.  It all made perfect sense even though I had not seen the movies.

I could not compare the actors in the show to the actors they were playing, however, because the only one I ever saw before was Richard Dreyfuss in The Goodbye Girl. Based on that, I think. Alex Brightman did a really good job of portraying him. 

On the whole, The Shark is Broken was different than any other show I have seen before and not just because I don't see a lot of plays. I  enjoyed that about it. It was an interesting show that is definitely worth seeing.

Mom - The Shark is Broken is a play about the actors;  Robert Shaw, Richard Dreyfuss, and Roy Scheider spending hours confined in a small boat together waiting for the mechanical shark to be fixed while making the movie Jaws. They are played by Ian Shaw, Alex Brightman, and Colin Donnell respectively. The play was written by Shaw, who is the son of the late, Robert Shaw, but this is no puff piece written by an adoring son as a tribute to his father. Shaw is definitely to be commended for his accurate representation of his father, flaws and all,  and for not trying to make him into a better person than he was.

Alex Brightman does a good job of capturing the neurotic energy of Richard Dreyfuss. Although he does seem to specialize in portraying similarly vibrant characters, Dreyfuss is different. On the surface, he may seem like just another overconfident blowhard, but he is a real man with an extreme neediness at his core.  Kudos to the hair and make-up artists who help Brightman completely escape into his character by rendering him virtually unrecognizable as himself.

Colin Donell does a nice job in the role of Roy Scheider as well. He has less to work with, however, as his character is kind of the calming center between the other two more over-the-top personalities. 

The set, lighting, sound, and projection designers do a terrific job of setting the scene. They expertly capture the stark contrast between the peaceful open sea and the dark, scary and stormy sea as well as the tension and claustrophobia of three men on a small boat.

Although the premise of the show may not seem all that comedic, and living it surely wasn't funny to the men who actually did, the show is actually quite funny. You don't even need to have seen any of the Jaws movies or be familiar with any of the actors depicted in the show to enjoy it.

And that's our view.  For more about The Shark is Broken or to purchase tickets, thesharkisbroken.com

Tune in Sunday for this week's Sunday Scoop.

Photo credits:

All The Shark is Broken production photos by Matthew Murphy

Images used in this post have been sent to us from publicists, artists, and/or  PR firms.
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