July 5, 2024 - Fat Ham and The Shark Is Broken

Today on The Culture Show, The play “Fat Ham.” It’s a modern-day adaptation of Shakespeare’s Hamlet, where the court of Denmark is transported to a backyard barbecue in the South, but the most radical change is the sublimation of Shakespeare’s epic tragedy into an uproarious comedy. Playwright James Ijames won a Pulitzer for Fat Ham in 2022.  We caught up with him when Fat Ham was onstage in Boston. From there, a behind-the-scenes look at the making of Jaws and the turbulence on the set, from the actors feuding with one another to a mechanical shark that was more blundering than plundering. The actor Robert Shaw, who played  Quint , a world-weary shark hunter, used to bring his son Ian to the set of Jaws. In an epic and oedipal twist, Ian Shaw played his dad in the “Shark is Broken,” a play that he also co-wrote. Ian Shaw joins The Culture Show to talk about the making of Jaws and the play that it inspired.