Review: Hold on to Your Butts

Review: Hold on to Your Butts | Recent Cutbacks | Denver, CO | Curtain Up | Gina Robertson

Hold on to Your Butts opened this week at the cozy Galleria Theater in the Denver Center. It’s a parody re-enactment of the 1993 movie Jurassic Park, and the title is a line delivered in the movie by Samuel L. Jackson. With two actors and a live Foley artist giving sound effects, the entire movie is presented scene by scene with limited props and costumes that adequately “suggest” the intended character in a way that’s funnier for its simplicity.

My tablemate leaned over during the curtain call and whispered, “I never saw Jurassic Park. I guess you had to have seen it, huh?” She’s right, the show is most fun for those who saw the movie and will recognize each of the iconic scenes as it is acted out in an exaggerated and haphazard way. The actors take turns doing their wonderfully mediocre Jeff Goldblum-as-Dr. Malcolm impressions. It’s all wonderfully nostalgic but takes care not to over-do it. The show is only about an hour long.

Created by Recent Cutbacks, a creative team who have been producing live movie parodies since 2014, this dinosaur movie enactment fuses comedy and theater with nostalgia and lo-fi spectacle. It is directed by Kristin McCarthy Parker, and the performers are Jay Dunn and Natalie Rich. The Foley is by Kelly Robinson. The real charm of this piece comes from the fabulous time these performers have on stage as well as galloping through the audience. They delight in cracking themselves up.

In a testament to this movie’s ability to cement itself in our collective memories, the scenes and characters represented need only the vaguest reference point to conjure up something real and vivid for the audience. Dr. Malcolm’s dark tinted glasses. Nedley’s Hawaiian shirt. John Hammond with his cane, and his grandchildren with their backpack and blonde ponytail. When these costume pieces are swapped around on stage from moment to moment, it really does bring the movie back almost as vividly as the first time we saw it thirty years ago.

Bonus points for creativity and imagination in the way the dinosaurs are depicted. It is equal parts in the acting talent of Dunn and Rich and in the use of odd objects to suggest the shape of a particular beast, such as the triple party hat worn on the head to represent triceratops’ horns or the traffic cone worn on the butt to represent the mighty tail of a giant T-rex. Strangely enough, it works!

See Hold on to Your Butts for a bit of nostalgia and a lot of laughter, through October 4.

For Information and Tickets:https://www.denvercenter.org/tickets-events/hold-onto-your-butts/