The Shark is Broken, playing through July 20 at the Martha’s Vineyard Performing Arts Center in Oak Bluffs, takes a fresh look at the filming of Jaws from the conflicting perspectives of its three Hollywood stars: Robert Shaw, Roy Scheider and Richard Dreyfuss.

Mr. Shaw’s son, playwright and actor Ian Shaw, based the play on his father’s diaries from the 1974 production, which famously ran months over schedule and millions over budget as director Steven Spielberg struggled against both the elements and a frequently-malfunctioning mechanical shark.

Released the following summer, the movie became an instant and enduring hit that launched Mr. Spielberg’s career, won an Academy Award for editor Verna Fields, terrified countless millions of viewers with its violently lifelike shark and launched an international fandom.

The Shark is Broken reminds us that the movie also owes its success to Mr. Scheider, Mr. Dreyfuss and Mr. Shaw, three very different actors whose individual disparities — as shown in the play — mirrored their characters’ conflicts on the screen.

Mr. Dreyfuss, the newcomer, is 20 years younger than Mr. Shaw, and 15 years younger than Mr. Scheider. He is also fresh off a breakout role in American Graffiti that has him wondering if he, himself, has what it takes to be a star.

Play was written by Robert Shaw's son, Ian Shaw, and is set on the Orca.

Nux Photography

Play was written by Robert Shaw's son, Ian Shaw, and is set on the Orca.

Nux Photography

“I’m shaped like Smokey the Bear and I’ve got this awful... nasal voice, just the worst,” he frets in the play.

Mr. Shaw — like his character, Quint — is both the heavyweight and the loosest cannon aboard the Orca, where all of The Shark is Broken takes place between takes as the actors wait on their floating set for the mechanical shark to be repaired and filming to resume.

Nominated for both an Academy Award and a Golden Globe in 1969, for playing Henry VIII in A Man for All Seasons, Mr. Shaw displayed a menacing strength as villains in The Sting and The Taking of Pelham One Two Three in the years running up to Jaws.

He also is an alcoholic who roams the floating Orca set like a caged lion, searching for the bottles of booze he’s hidden among the props and treating Mr. Dreyfuss with withering condescension that veers into outright violence when the younger man tosses a bottle overboard.

“Never touch another man’s booze!” Mr. Shaw rages, his hands locked around Mr. Dreyfuss’s throat.

Buffering the two antagonists is Mr. Scheider, a former Golden Gloves boxer and Air Force veteran with 10 years of experience in theatre, film and television, who has already been Oscar-nominated as a supporting actor in The French Connection and is now playing his first lead role as Chief Martin Brody.

Mr. Scheider also is a patient man.

“It’s not the time it takes to take the take that takes the time. It’s the time it takes between the takes that takes the time,” the character quips, in an actual line from a 1974 behind-the-scenes video.

As he keeps playing peacemaker between Mr. Shaw and Mr. Dreyfuss, Mr. Scheider discovers there’s more than dislike behind the older actor’s bullying.

“It is the grit in the oyster that produces a pearl, Roy. I am that grit. He’s giving a better performance because of it,” Mr. Shaw boasts.

When they’re not squabbling, the actors reveal other preoccupations as well. While Mr. Scheider is happy to read newspapers and sunbathe on the Orca’s deck, Mr. Dreyfuss spirals into an anxiety attack and Mr. Shaw — a playwright as well as an actor — keeps wrestling with the script for Quint’s pivotal speech about the wreck of the Indianapolis.

The Shark is Broken naturally comes with a boatload of Easter eggs (inside references) for Jaws fans and Islanders, as well as some some rueful references to the political events of 1974.

“Christ, there will never be a more evil president,” Mr. Scheider muses, after reading a New York Times editorial about Richard Nixon.

Produced by Bill Hanney’s North Shore Music Theatre in collaboration with Circuit Arts/Circuit Stage, The Shark is Broken is directed by Guy Masterson, who directed the original productions in the United Kingdom and on Broadway.

The play stars Timothy W. Hull, who plays Mr. Shaw with a mix of gravitas and vulnerability; Josh Tyson as the almost-unflappable Mr. Scheider, and Jonathan Randall Silver as the insecure but appealingly nebbishy Mr. Dreyfuss.

Duncan Henderson designed the cutaway Orca set and he music and sound design is from Tony Award-winning Adam Cork, with lighting designed by Jeff Greenberg and video by Nina Dunn.

Tickets are available online at sharkmv.com.