The Shark is Broken: Jaws behind the scenes at CCADS

Portsmouth's amateur theatre scene has a lot to be proud of, and the latest production at the CCADS theatre is a good example. The Community Arts and Drama Society is currently staging The Shark is Broken, a clever, interval-free comedy that takes you behind the scenes of the notoriously troubled making of the 1975 film Jaws. It is a fresh pick for anyone in the city looking for something different, and it is not the only thing the CCADS is known for — the venue is listed in the Portsmouth Amateur Diary, which keeps track of amateur theatre across Portsmouth, Fareham, Havant, Horndean, Chichester and Petersfield.

The play, written by British playwrights Ian Shaw and Joseph Nixon, is set in 1974 on Martha's Vineyard. It follows the three leading actors — Roy Scheider, Robert Shaw and Richard Dreyfuss — as they are stranded aboard the Orca, the shark hunter Quint's boat, while mechanical failures with 'Bruce', the film's mechanical shark, bring production to a standstill for days and weeks on end. The story is told in three parts: the actors' arrival at the seventh week of filming, the hierarchy that forms between them by the tenth week, and the philosophical conversations about the film's meaning as filming winds down. A good chunk of the drama centres on the USS Indianapolis speech, which Robert Shaw struggled with and eventually rewrote with Steven Spielberg's permission.

On stage, the production is anchored by a superbly realised set that drops you straight onto the Orca and makes the isolation of the open sea feel real. The cast does a lot of the heavy lifting: Tim Skedge plays Roy Scheider, John-Paul McCrohon takes on Richard Dreyfuss, and Paul Tully plays Robert Shaw. In a review published on 26 July, Nick Collins, a lifelong Jaws devotee, described the production as 'absorbing, captivating and deeply rewarding', adding that it 'never loses its nerve' and 'more than does the play justice'. He was particularly impressed by Tully's performance as Shaw, which builds to a haunting delivery of that USS Indianapolis speech, while Skedge captures Scheider's measured professionalism and McCrohon balances youthful confidence with a flicker of underlying insecurity.

It is worth knowing that this is not a local one-off. The Shark is Broken premiered in 2019 at the Rialto Theatre in Brighton, played a sold-out run at the Edinburgh Fringe that was extended by four performances, and went on to the West End's Ambassadors Theatre in 2021, where it earned an Olivier nomination for Best Entertainment or Comedy Play. It has since played in Toronto and on Broadway, and a UK and Ireland tour was scheduled to start at the Oxford Playhouse in January 2025. Seeing it here in Portsmouth, staged by a community society, gives the whole thing a different, more intimate character.

Whether you have seen Jaws a dozen times or only know it by reputation, the play works because it is less about the shark and more about the people stuck on the boat with it. It is a heartfelt look at the personalities, pressures and personal demons that nearly derailed one of the most famous films ever made, and it is a genuinely rewarding evening out. If you are in Portsmouth and fancy a bit of theatre that is as much about the craft as it is about the story, this is a hard one to pass up.