This bawdy tribute to dinosaurs and their newfound genitalia doesn’t particularly make sense, and the would-be cult-classic onslaught at the very beginning — a naughty preshow announcement, a belabored gag with a white guy impersonating Morgan Freeman — has the “Laugh! I said laugh!!” hard sell of far too many New York International Fringe Festival transfers. (This one won an award for best musical at the 2010 festival.)
But give the authors, Marshall Pailet, Bryce Norbitz and Stephen Wargo, a little time. Their material eventually settles into a contentedly sophomoric vibe, happy to show off here and pander there. There are worse things than seeing clever people try too hard.
All three wrote the book and lyrics, which focus on the heretofore all-female Triassic Parq, an extremely thinly veiled version of a certain fictional dinosaur theme park, being thrown into a tizzy when one of the T. rexes (Claire Neumann) morphs from a she-rex to a he-rex. Appetites carnal and otherwise get the better of the characters, “Spring Awakening” style, as a wide-eyed young velociraptor (an endearing Alex Wyse) tries to make sense of it all.
The score by Mr. Pailet has at least two power ballads too many, although it also boasts the least embarrassing hip-hop number within a conventional book musical in recent memory. (Here and throughout, Lindsay Nicole Chambers is both shameless and priceless as an exiled raptor.)
Mr. Pailet also directed, packing multiple so-so jokes onto the stage when one genuinely funny example would suffice. But much is forgiven after a flat-out ingenious mirror-image sequence — think of Groucho and Harpo Marx in “Duck Soup,” except with rippling water and a giant penis. Better still, try not to think of that. If you can’t help it, perhaps “Triassic Parq” is for you.
In the two years since it premiered at the Fringe Festival (with a title more closely resembling Michael Crichton's), Triassic Parq has lost one of its writers and gained some clarity, but not enough. Freeman makes a big deal of explaining the title in the opening scene: "What does the 'q' stand for, you ask? Simple. It stands... for 'truth.'" Uh, okay. But given what's onstage now, it seems like the authors might need to spend another 230 million years or so figuring out exactly what that and the point of the evening are supposed to be.
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