Teatro de Ciertos Habitantes (Certain Inhabitants’ Theatre Company) of Mexico City, Mexico, presents El Automóvil Gris (The Grey Automobile), an interpretation of director Enrique Rosas’ Mexican classic silent film in traditional Japanese benshi style. During silent films, the benshi stood to the side of the movie screen and introduced and related the story to the audience, often speaking for the characters onscreen. Noted Mexican director and actor Claudio Valdés Kuri takes a silent film classic filled with gangsters, police chases and sumptuous costumes and gives it a thoroughly modern soundtrack through the talents of actors Fabrina Melón and Irene Akiko Iida and pianist Ernesto Gómez Santana. Valdés Kuri also plays the English-speaking benshi in the production.

The 1919 gangster drama El Automóvil Gris is considered by critics to be the most important work and one of the few surviving films of Mexico’s silent film era. It follows the jewelry heists, shady deals and ultimate demise of the real-life Grey Automobile Gang, outlaws who terrorized post-revolutionary Mexico in the early years of the 20th century. Presented in partnership with The National Hispanic Cultural Center.

Fri. & Sat., January 19 & 20, 8 p.m., Albuquerque Journal Theatre, National Hispanic Cultural Center. Tickets $25 (rows 1-12), $20 (remaining floor seats), $15 (balcony). Tickets available through the NHCC Box Office 505-724-4771.

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