THEATER REVIEW : Score One for ‘Nosferatu’ : Caleb Sampson’s Original, Atmospheric Music Adds Bite to Toothless Embellishment of Vampire Film

IRVINE —  In the first line of Annie Loui’s program notes to “Nosferatu, A Symphony of Horror,” her theatrical hommage tW. Murnau’s 1922 silent film classic of the same name, she claims that “vampires are dear to all our hearts.”

Are they really all that cuddly? Maybe Loui has been hanging around lately with Francis Coppola. To judge by the production itself, which opened Thursday night at UC Irvine’s Fine Arts Concert Hall, there’s no question she’s been bitten by some kind of vampire bug.

Just what sort, though, seems up in the air. The show she has staged and choreographed with UCI students against a huge, somewhat faded, black-and-white projection of Murnau’s “Nosferatu” doesn’t make any statement about the legend that isn’t already made in the film.

Billed as “an interactive theater-film performance,” Loui’s piece isn’t a bad way for an audience to take in the movie. But its ambitious promise turns out to be strictly cinematic embroidery.

Virtually all the stage production does is re-enact Murnau’s scenes as they are screened behind the live players. The effect is dramatically redundant, except for a few striking visual images deployed imaginatively against the projection.

The only real drama comes from guest composer Caleb Sampson’s atmospheric original score.

Performed on a synthesizer by Sampson and by percussionist Evangelina Estrada, the music compels our interest with its melodramatic tension. It is largely made of unrelenting chordal repetitions in a minimalistic style. Philip Glass is bound to come to mind.

Sampson’s score never becomes overbearing, moreover, at least not to these ears. And it lends both Murnau’s movie and Loui’s choreographic staging more weight than they otherwise would have.

Besides creating a sonic environment of authoritative organlike resonance, the music also turns delicate at times (as when a light piano waltz embellishes a live dance interlude at Nosferatu’s castle, one of a few scenes staged without a projection behind it).

Loui, a UCI faculty member, manages to achieve some heightened effects through her schematic choreography and through the movie’s title cards by having them spoken aloud as they appear on screen, either in a Greek chorus or in dialogue. But here again, the production’s nagging redundancy vitiates the dramatic impact.

It is only when Loui works in counterpoint to the film that her staging is aesthetically provocative. For example, when the live Nosferatu (Alexander Sasha Zubatov) climbs across the screen behind the projected image of him staring into Nina’s bedroom--or when he sits alone on stage, mouth agape, framed by a backdrop of the rat-infested death ship arriving in Bremen--the production conveys an authentic feeling.

The theater piece could have used more of this contrapuntal imagery throughout. Lacking that, it seems merely imitative and entirely too deferential to Murnau for its own good.

*”Nosferatu, A Symphony of Horror,” Fine Arts Concert Hall at UC Irvine, near Bridge and Pereira Roads, Irvine. Saturday, 2 and 8 p.m.; Sunday, 2 and 7 p.m. Ends May 30. $6 to $14. (714) 856-6616. Running time: 1 hour, 30 minutes.

Lisa Colbert: Women’s Chorus Leader

Laura Mulrenan: Women’s Chorus

Amelinda Smith: Women’s Chorus

Michael Smith: Jonathan

Vanessa Robertson: Nina

Margarito Rincon, Jr.: Renfield

Daniel Case: Men’s Chorus Leader

Allen Moon: Men’s Chorus

Edward W. Johnson: Men’s Chorus

Alexander Sasha Zubatov: Nosferatu

Evangelina Estrada: Percussionist

A Drama at UC Irvine production of an interactive theater-film performance conceived and directed by Annie Loui. Original music composed and performed by Caleb Sampson. Scenic design by Julie Allardice. Costume design by Felicia Libbin. Lighting design by Christopher Hall. Stage manager: Jennifer A. Whalen. The film used in the production is “Nosferatu, Eine Symphonie Des Grauens,” directed in 1922 by F. W. Murnau from a screenplay by Heinrick Galeen that was based on Bram Stoker’s novel “Dracula.”