INTERVIEW: This ‘JAWS’ parody is in search of a bigger boat
Photo: JAWS: The Musical! features Suzanne Stein, Natty Bumpercar and Wayne Henry. Photo courtesy of Catherine Tallman / Provided by Wayne Henry with permission.
In many ways, 2025 is the year of the shark. Festivities are already being planned for the 50th anniversary of Jaws, the quintessential summer blockbuster, which came out in 1975 and forever changed humans’ relationship with the ocean. Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts, where the film was shot by Steven Spielberg, has a jam-packed June with fun, shark-tastic events.
But one doesn’t have to wait until June or travel to that tucked-away island off the coast of Massachusetts to relive the adventures of Quint, Brody and Hooper as they take on a great white shark, nicknamed Bruce. At the New York City Fringe Festival, Wayne Henry is presenting JAWS: The Musical!, a loving parody of the monster flick. Performances started this week and continue through April 19 at the Chain Theatre on West 36th Street in Manhattan.
Henry wrote the show and plays the character of Hooper, famously brought to life in the movie by Richard Dreyfuss. Anthony Logan Cole directs the one-hour work, while musical direction comes courtesy of David Citron. Joining Henry in the cast are Evie Apple, Natty Bumpercar, Robbie Stevens, Kate Hoover, Suzanne Stein and David Citron on the piano.
“This was an idea in 2002,” Henry said about the origins of the project. “We performed as a sketch group at Rose’s Turn, and we were just looking for a recurring sketch. It was at the time when Broadway was doing all these movies-to-musicals — Hairspray, The Producers. Those were really big on Broadway, so I was like, ‘What show would be an awful choice for a musical?’ So I wrote it as a little 20-minute thing, and it just ended up being really fun to do and came out better than I expected. So we’ve been doing these iterations over the years. And it was 20 minutes, then it became a half hour. Then this summer it went from 40 minutes to an hour, so now we’re at an hour for the Fringe Festival. But I’ve become a fan of the movie by working on the musical.”
Henry said the first half of the movie, which finds Hooper, the scientist; Quint, the salty fisherman; and Brody, the local police chief, banding together to head out on the water and find this dangerous and deadly shark, is essentially the same in the musical. And then the story takes a right turn, and there’s no looking back.
“It’s almost directly spoofing the movie Jaws I would say for the first half, and then there’s a twist where it just goes off and becomes its own thing once we discover the shark is out for love,” he said. “At the Fringe, we have 60 minutes, and if we go over 60 minutes, the lights are going to be shut off on us.”
After the Fringe run, Henry is hoping to add another 15 minutes of content for a final version of 75 minutes, so he is nearing the end of the development phase and wants to lock in the parody for good. Perhaps he’ll add more numbers for the shark itself: Yes, the shark has solo songs in the musical, plus a few duets.
“Every actor has their main part, and then we’ll have these smaller parts that we fill in with,” he said. “So it’s a true ensemble experience. So I’m also playing Hooper, and then the two producers who are also standup comics, Suzanne Stein is playing Quint, which works great as a woman playing it, and then Natty Bumpercar is playing Chief Brody. … I used to not have the mayor character, but I added the mayor this summer. And the mayor is played by Evie Apple; it’s a very seductive, feminine mayor this time around.”
Henry added: “Once you see Suzanne as Quint, you’ll have no doubt of why she’s playing the role. In this one, Quint has a tap solo, and I don’t tap. So there’s that, too.”
JAWS: The Musical! is very clearly a parody, and Henry is not anticipating any legal troubles for spoofing a well-known intellectual property. The show follows in the footsteps of other parodies that have hit New York stages, including everything from Forbidden Sondheim to Stranger Sings!
“When we started this show 20-something years ago, it was just so completely obvious that it was a spoof,” he said. “Nowadays there are other musicals. There’s Bruce, the musical about the shark. There’s The Shark Is Broken. There are other plays and musicals since, so I hope it’s still very clear that it’s a complete spoof of the movie and a love letter to silly musical theater.”
In fact, the show is so funny that the cast and creative team struggle to get through a rehearsal without cracking up. “We’re having trouble in rehearsal not laughing at each other because everyone’s take is so funny,” Henry said. “Although there was one joke that I tried in rehearsal, and everyone was just completely silent. And I found myself having to explain it, so if there is a joke that I need to explain or everybody just looks at me with a deadpan face, then I change it. But we do what makes us laugh, and so I think that’ll translate.”
Henry added: “The characters are fully aware that there’s an audience watching them, but they’re very serious about what they’re doing. I think of it like my favorite movie, Airplane!, where it’s a ridiculous situation, and the words coming out of everyone’s mouth are pretty ridiculous. But we are serious about what we’re saying.”
By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com
JAWS: The Musical! plays the Chain Theatre through April 19 as part of the New York City Fringe Festival. Click here for more information and tickets.
