They Should All Be Destroyed — photo by John Ruscher — see more photos from this event>>

Baltimore’s energetic arts collective Wham City honored the recently departed Michael Crichton this past Saturday by bringing They Should All Be Destroyed, a play based on Jurassic Park, back to Bushwick.

The crew first brought the production to Market Hotel in March and, following Crichton’s death, they decided to pack up their tropical foliage, dinosaur eggs and raptor masks and embark on a final East Coast jaunt.

They Should All Be Destroyed falls somewhere between ironic parody and honest, youthful enthusiasm, and, considering the immense effort that must have gone into this piece of DIY theater, let’s lean towards the latter. The Wham City folks went well beyond a simple amateur imitation or a half-assed lampoon, instead injecting their own slapstick humor, clever production and odd sexual tension into Spielberg’s blockbuster adaptation. Sometimes the screaming was a bit over the top, but they were dealing with dinosaurs, after all.

A good crowd made it out despite the drizzly weather, and fairly frequent hoots and laughs indicated that everyone was having fun. Highlights were definitely the dinosaurs themselves (specifically the poison-spitting Dilophosaurus — see video below) and Mason Ross’ quirky portrayal of “chaos theorist” Dr. Ian Malcolm (played by Jeff Goldblum in the movie).

Wham City, who helped bring the 29-band Baltimore Round Robin tour to Manhattan last month, certainly think big, and it’ll be exciting to see what they return with next time. A hipster circus, maybe?