Review: ‘Jurassiq Parq' at Oasis is S.F.'s show of the summer, claws down
The core of D'Arcy Drollinger, OasisArts and Michael Phillis' unimprovable show, which I saw Friday, July 18, at Oasis, is a bone-deep understanding of its source material. Writer Phillis and director Jason Hoover bring electric wit to and contagious affection for the many, many quirks in Steven Spielberg's film about an island theme park with real live dinosaurs: The shirt of Jeff Goldblum (Marshall Forte) is unbuttoned a lot more than seems necessary, and when he's injured, he does spend a lot of time posing like a male model. The explanation of how Colonel Sanders Hammond (Vanilla Meringue) and Dr. BD Wong (Trixie Aballa) reincarnated dinosaurs from fossilized DNA (Edie Eve) is indeed a bit like intoning one word — 'Science!' — and sending tasseled pasties spiraling in opposite directions.
The team devises one brilliant lo-fi solution after another, starting before the show with an electric fence cordoning off the VIP area and a giant cube dominating the stage with 'CAUTION' written on the sides' fabric; inevitably, those curtains must drop, and sexy velociraptors (Madeline Lambie, May Ramos and Ryan Patrick Welsh) must emerge to sing 'Bootylicious.'
A couple lazily rotating foam tubes and a leafblower simulate a helicopter. When Dr. Laura Dern (Elenor Irene Paul) plunges her hand inside a hillock of dinosaur poo, the wet, thwack sound that designer Jerry Girad devises is so evocative you might think someone licked your ears. And ingeniously, even in a low-ceilinged club, a tyrannosaurus rex finds a way to tower.
As characters vent their sexual frustrations with chef's-kiss retro tunes — Chris Isaak's 'Wicked Game,' Aerosmith's 'I Don't Want to Miss a Thing' — the singing is way, way better than you have any right to expect from performers humping their way onstage through a sweaty, throbbing crowd sloshing their neon drinks around. Tuneful, soulful, powerful, it puts to shame the vocals in many musical theater productions that take themselves more seriously.
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Those same performers nail their caricatures. As Dr. Jeff Goldblum, Forte is all twitchy, breathy smarminess, his entreaties for someone, anyone, to listen to him talk about chaos theory liable to explode at any moment in a spontaneous ejaculation. As inept villain Wayne Nerdy, Snaxx is a whole bundle of live wires, fizzing in so many directions simultaneously that you really start to question any enterprise that would give him sole control of security systems. And as grandkids Lexxx and Timy, Barbie Bloodgloss and Kitty Litter create a double act so deliciously weird and fully embodied they could stand to the side and give a running commentary.
When, not if, you go, re-watch the movie first, just so you can savor the full splendor of every punch line — a bathroom sequence, a goat cameo, why it was such a good idea to (almost totally) eliminate Sam Neill's nonentity character. Put team Phillis and Hoover in charge of more things. The city of San Francisco has a lot of problems, but 'Jurassiq Parq' makes you feel like you could solve more of them if we all just banded together with some sequin-clad dinosaurs to sing 'What's Up' by 4 Non Blondes.
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