Nosferatu, Weird City Theatre Company at Dougherty Arts Center, October 22 - November 1

If you're looking for dark and spooky, then Weird City Theatre Company has got dark and spooky for you, down at the Dougherty Arts Center for the Thursday to Sunday Halloween weekend.

These connoisseurs of the unnerving have blended Bram Stoker's Dracula and F.W. Murnau's unauthorized German expressionist knock-off of the novel for a short, satisfying evening of the eerie.

You could view the 84-minute video of Murnau's 1922 silent film as preserved by the Cinemathèque française with an orchestral soundtrack either at Google video or at YouTube, but it may well be more fun to see Weird City reincarnate both the characters and the ghosts of those actors now long dead and gone.

Read more at AustinLiveTheatre.com . . . .

Upcoming: Nosferatu, Weird City Theatre Company at Dougherty Arts Center, October 22 - November 1

UPDATE: Click for ALT review, October 27

Received directly:









Weird City Theatre Company
announces the World Premiere
of their adaptation of F.W. Murnau's

Nosferatu

Co-directed by Patti Neff-Tiven and John F. Carroll
October 22 - November 1
Thursdays-Saturdays at 8 p.m., Sundays at 5 p.m.
Dougherty Arts Center, 1110 Barton Springs Road
View Map

Weird City Theatre Company kicks off its 2009-2010 season with a world premiere stage production of Nosferatu, adapted from F. W. Murnau's 1922 German Expressionist film Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror. This chilling production, adapted by John F. Carroll and John W. Smith, combines elements of Murnau's film and Bram Stoker's original vampire story Dracula and features an original score by Robert L. Berry.

Tickets are $15.00 for adults and $12.00 for children, seniors and students (with ID), and group rates are available. Tickets available at www.weirdcitytheatre.com, or by calling 512.745.2636.

Weird City Theatre's mission is to encourage the growth of the artist and represent the uniqueness and vitality of Austin through re-envisioned classics and original works. Keeping a child-like sense of play, we focus on the process of the actor and we are playing our part to keep Austin weird!

Weird City Theatre is a sponsored project of Austin Circle of Theatres, a nonprofit performing arts service organization.

Click to view video trailer (1 min.)

The Rivals by Richard Brinsley Sheridan, Weird City Theatre Company, July 16 - 26

Here's what I like about John Carroll and the Weird City Theatre Company: they have a sense of fun that's irreverent and modern, but they take their drama seriously.

Necessarily low-rent but not sloppy, the company performs with energy, confidence, and an appreciation for the text, whatever it might be. They have a taste for pop -- we've seen an adaptation of Night of the Living Dead, a faithful production of William Gillette's Sherlock Holmes, and around Halloween we'll get their take on Nosferatu, F.W. Murnau's 1921 unathorized film version of Dracula.

Richard Brinsley Sheridan's The Rivals from 1775 is pop of a different sort. Sheridan, born into a theatrical family and married for love. The success at Covent Garden of this, his first play, spurred him to buy out Garrick's Drury Lane and subsequently to run successfully for Parliament. It's a comedy of manners in which Jack, an artistocratic military officer, disguises his well born origins in order to court Miss Lydia Languish, a dizzy heiress beguiled by popular novels and intent on forfeiting her ample trust fund by marrying poor, for love.

Read more at AustinLiveTheatre.com . . . .