FringeNYC review: Jurassic Parq: The Broadway Musical

Jurassic Parq: The Broadway Musical takes the creative license allotted by the New York Fringe Festival and rolls around in it like a pig in the mud on ecstasy. What begins as a lovingly bizarre homage to the blockbuster novel and film quickly morphs into an incoherent barrage of random humor.

Told from the perspective of Jurassic Park’s genetically engineered dinosaurs (kind of like a Wicked for prehistoric creatures), the formerly extinct grapple with their new sexual organs and urges (kind of like a Spring Awakening for gigantic reptiles) as they transition from female to male. Using notable lines from the movie (“Shooooot haaarrr!”), the production is charming and nostalgic, if not healthily quirky. But soon, writers Emma Barash, Bryce Norbitz, Marshall Pailet, and Stephen Wargo employ a Family Guy mentality that random humor can solely sustain a show. Jurassic Parq feels random for the sake of being random.

The “q” in “Parq” apparently stands for “truth.” The narrator (Lee Seymour) is Morgan Freeman, who can’t decide if he is in fact Freeman or Samuel L. Jackson. Expletives are shouted from out of nowhere (a desperate reach for laughs). And the three major songs of the piece are anything but subtle, such as “Dick Fix.” A smart and successful moment for the music, however, is the final number, “We Are Dinosaurs,” which is set to the film’s famous John Williams score.

With a loose story that is basically a bunch of individual scenes that follow another and characters constantly doing over-the-top things (screaming, raping, roaring), Jurassic Parq becomes so bizarre that it did have its sold-out theater laughing most of the time. Yet the laughter seemed born out of confusion and surprise, rather than genuine delight. Read more