It’s one thing for a director to call “action!”, and another to get it. All manner of things can go wrong, and in Jaws, Stephen Spielberg’s monstrously successful 1975 thriller, plenty did.

In this wryly funny, affectionate, twin-pronged tribute to the film that changed Hollywood and to its marvellous yet difficult star, the audience is anchored off the stern of the Orca, the decrepit boat in which actors Roy Scheider, Robert Shaw and Richard Dreyfuss set out – as Police Chief Martin, the eccentric shark-hunter Quint and marine scientist Hooper – to locate and kill the great white shark that has been feasting on Amity Island locals in the lead-up to the 4 July holiday.

Mostly, however, the actors aren’t doing much at all. The film’s real star, “Bruce”, the animatronic shark, is repeatedly breaking down, leaving Scheider, Shaw and Dreyfuss little to do between takes except drink, smoke, sunbathe and bicker.

Anthony Gooley, Tom Stokes and Robin Goldsworthy in The Shark is Broken. Photo © David Hooley

As portrayed by writer Ian Shaw (son of Robert) and co-writer Joseph Nixon, Scheider (played here by Tom Stokes) is a steady, fact-obsessed peacemaker...