Review: THE SHARK IS BROKEN at Vagabond Players

In THE SHARK IS BROKEN, the Vagabond Players takes us to the open ocean, east of Martha's Vineyard, onboard the Orca, during the summer and fall of 1974, where, unbeknownst to its participants, movie history was being made.  There, we find one broken mechanical shark, three actors of varying degrees of mental stability, a disembodied not-yet-super-famous director lurking in the background of a film named Jaws that no one thinks will be a hit.

The play imagines the long, tense, frequently tedious hours between takes as Robert Shaw (Doug Krehbel), Richard Dreyfuss (Andy Belt), and Roy Scheider (Matthew Lindsay Payne) wait on a floating platform while the Atlantic—and their egos—churn around them. What might have remained a clever, single-note premise deepens here into a sharply observed and often affecting study of masculinity, artistic insecurity, and the slow grind of waiting for something—anything—to finally happen.

The Vagabond’s intimate space serves the play especially well. The audience feels nearly as confined as the characters, sharing the claustrophobia, boredom, and sudden flashes of insight that punctuate the evening. The set is spare but suggestive, conjuring both a rickety film prop and a psychological pressure cooker. You can almost smell the salt air—and the lingering resentment.

The performances drive the production. Each actor captures not only the public image of his famous counterpart, but the private unease beneath it. Krehbel is simply superb as the whisky-drinking, wise-cracking Shaw whose blustery confidence barely conceals anxiety about fading relevance.  Belt is a neurotic delight as the youthful Dreyfuss whose intelligence crackles with ambition and barely contained panic.  As Scheider, Payne is cool and charming as the smart, steady, center between two volatile objects.  He keeps order with wry humor while quietly wondering where he fits in a shifting Hollywood hierarchy. The three actors physically and emotionally embody their real-life counterparts to great effect. The chemistry snaps, crackles and pops. 

What gives The Shark Is Broken resonance beyond movie-buff nostalgia is its clear-eyed understanding of creative work as endurance.  It asks what happens when success hovers just out of reach, when talent collides with fear, and when men conditioned to compete are forced into prolonged stillness with one another. The result is comical, tragical and everything in between.  

Under Stephen Deininger's direction, there is a palpable sense of time stretching and folding back on itself—days blurring together, tempers flaring over nothing and then everything. The script trusts the audience, allowing conversations to wander the way real ones do when people are tired, stalled, and unsure. The result is a final movement that feels earned rather than manufactured.

For Baltimore theatergoers, The Shark Is Broken reminds the audience of how powerful small-scale theater can be when it commits fully to character and language. You don’t need the shark to work. You just need the men—and here, they do more than deliver.

Smart, sharply acted, and quietly human, The Shark Is Broken at the Vagabond proves that sometimes the most compelling drama happens when nothing appears to be happening at all.

THE SHARK IS BROKEN plays from now through February 1, 2026 at The Vagabond located at 806 S. Broadway. For tickets and more information call (410) 563-9135 or go to www.vagabondplayers.org