Sink your teeth into a Jaws and Shaws act
WHAT a joy to see the great Robert Shaw return to life. . . in the shape of his son, Ian.
The occasion is a behind-thescenes tale on the set of Steven Spielberg’s Jaws, in which Shaw emerges as though from an underground speakeasy: greasy boozer’s locks clinging to his skull, crooked grin playing on his lips.
Ian is the spit of his dad in Jaws — one of Shaw’s last films before he died of a heart attack in 1978 on a roadside in Ireland, aged just 51.
Ian, who is now 51 himself, has the same snarl, the same malevolent chuckle. He even uncorks some of his father’s intoxicating stage charisma.
A hit on the Edinburgh Fringe in 2019, Guy Masterson’s 90-minute show, which was written by Shaw Jr along with Joseph Nixon, recreates the idle hours the actor spent with his Jaws co-stars Roy Scheider and Richard Dreyfuss — bickering, playing games and telling stories as they waited for the film’s mechanical shark to be fixed.
Duncan Henderson’s design splits a replica of the boat from the movie from deck to keel, as if with a can opener, to give us ringside seats.
Even more stunning is Nina Dunn’s panoramic video projection of the Atlantic, complete with gulls, fog, sunsets and stars — and waves lapping at the boat’s hull.
Ian nails his dad’s roguish charm and the crowning glory is his speech in Jaws about being sunk in shark-infested waters in World War II — which Shaw wrote and performed for Spielberg on set.
Demetri Goritsas, as Scheider, has what Shaw called ‘the look of incorruptibility’.
And while Liam Murray Scott is less of a lookalike, as Shaw’s whipping boy Dreyfuss, he’s still a furry-faced innocent whose lapse into cocaine-induced paranoia is tenderly soothed by Shaw reciting a Shakespeare sonnet.
Some short scenes are obviously redundant, but Shaw Jr is absolutely spellbinding in his delivery of a warts-and-all eulogy to his long-lost old man.
Now for the film!