The “Unauthorized Musical Parody Of…” series has a recipe that always works: take a beloved film, break it down to its most basic parts, find ways to lovingly exploit them and then loop in pop songs that help propel the story. And it works every time. The energy and talent on display at Rockwell Table & Stage are oftentimes some of the best the L.A. theater community has to offer. And while taking on something as wild and ambitious as “Jurassic Park” seems destined for, if not a failure, at least disappointment, it doesn’t seem to matter the grandness of the scope of a film because the “UMPO” camp can do just about anything.

Michael Crichton wrote the bestseller on which Steven Spielberg based his 1993 film adaptation, which went on to become a worldwide smash and spawned three sequels (with a fourth coming soon). The fantasy-thriller focuses on an island that is set to become a theme park with real-life dinosaurs cloned from DNA. When one of the creatures kills an employee, the park’s owner John Hammond (Owain Rhys Davies) recruits three paleontologists, Alan Grant (Keir Kirkegaard), Ellie Sattler (Lesley McKinnell) and Ian Malcolm (Michael Thomas Grant, who is referred to solely as Goldblum since Jeff Goldblum, who played the role in the film, transcends every character he plays), to come in to oversee and do damage control. Of course, to our delight, things don’t go according to plan.

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Once in a while, we’re met with stories that not only defy expectations, but teach us that the impossible can very well be possible. Despite how much we want to be successful, it’s not easy getting there because many of us decide that the pain that paves the path to glory simply isn’t worth it. As we’ve discovered, or soon will, it doesn’t necessarily matter if we read a catalog of self-improvement books, walk on blisteringly hot coals, see every Adam Sandler film in which Rob Schneider famously utters “You can do it!”, or if our best friend sings our praises like Pavarotti at the Met. Just as soon as our self-worth can balloon into the stratosphere, and we feel like we’re indestructible, the universe can just as easily come crashing down on our illusions as we’re caught catnapping on our goals.

Where am I going with this? Well, it’s a good thing you asked. The point I’m trying to make is simple. While we’ve been lying to ourselves, and looking to other fallible humans for guidance and support, a feline by the name of Sabrina Pound has catapulted herself into not only the stratosphere, but solidified and sustained the reality of her boundless imagination, working harder than a great number of us lazy fantasizers ever did. “The Secret” is real; through faith and the unending power of the will to be great, she has surmounted her furry limitations, leaping over them with cat-like reflexes, and doing so with the artistic ingenuity of a Leonardo, Raphael, Michaelangelo, or Donatello.

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UMPO JURASSIC PARK/written by Kate Pazakis/directed by Nathan Moore/musical direction by Gregory Nabours/Rockwell Table & Stage/thru April 28, 2017

Kate Pazakis, executive producer of the UNAUTHORIZED MUSICAL PARODY OF… series ably does triple duty in her latest wildly entertaining, two-hour production of THE UNAUTHORIZED MUSICAL PARODY OF JURASSIC PARK. For UMPO JURASSIC PARK, Pazakis not only produces and cleverly writes this enthralling, very witty musical homage to Michael Crichton and Steven Speilberg’s 1993 classic film Jurassic Park; Pazakis joins her talented cast onstage singing her ass off as the dinosaur T-Rex. Pazakis effortlessly wields a long stick with a huge dinosaur head atop of it while displaying her very strong vocal pipes in all her numbers, especially in her solos in “Walk the Dinosaur” and “I’ve Got the Power.”

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