Jurassic Park the Musical

Lame jokes, cheesy dialogue, and songs with titles like “Dinosaurs”, “Chaos Theory” and “Raptors in the Kitchen” are the milieu of Jurassic Park the Musical. A parody of Stephen Spielberg’s 1993 movie, the show was first staged in a backyard in Lincoln, Nebraska, in 2009.

Since then it’s been performed by college students multiple times and even in 3D on a vacant lot. Arts Theatre produced a workshop of it in 2016. In this current version a group of more than accomplished Arts Theatre regulars try to keep this piece of nonsense buoyant with varying results.

Director Shaun King made a meal of game-warden Robert Muldoon with his ‘ocker’ portrayal complete with shorts, boots and Digger’s hat, Gabby Carbon did likewise with paleobotanist Dr Ellie Sattler spending the entire second act with dinosaur faeces on her face, whilst Chris Kellet in dark glasses and black wig channelled Elvis as chaos theorist Dr Ian Malcolm.

Others to impress were Michael Fryer as Timmy, Alexandra Bolland as Lex, Christopher Crane as Dr Alan Grant and David Harrison who nicely cloned Richard Attenborough as John Hammond.

It was all very undergraduate and silly and pleased the mostly college-age audience. Biggest laughs came from the green dinosaur, an art department treat that brought much needed comic relief whenever it appeared.

Peter Pinne