Performances in N.Y.C. Ian Shaw plays his father, Robert Shaw, in “The Shark Is Broken,” a comedy based on the troubled production of the 1975 film “Jaws.” “You still have to have the ...

The play is extremely aware — too aware! — of the legacy of “Jaws” and of future events to come, and endlessly references them. The shark is broken, but the winks are in overdrive.

After seeing “ The Shark Is Broken,” a play about that disastrous shoot, you may wonder the opposite: whether it might not have been better to cast the movie with mechanical humans.