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Theatre patrons might want to avoid wearing their finest apparel to "Evil Dead: The Musical."

Reason being that this campy humans versus zombies horror musical is rife with violence, some of which leads to blood getting splattered on the audience.

"I'm sure there are going to be a few people who aren't down with that," says local actor T.J. Austin. "But for the most part, I think, anybody that's going to come see this show in the first place is probably excited by the fact that they might get splattered with blood."

An acting major at UNCG, Austin will be playing the lead role of Ash in the university's production, which opens Friday.

Adapted primarily from the first two films of the cult favorite "Evil Dead" trilogy that began in 1981 with "The Evil Dead" and continued with "Evil Dead II: Dead By Dawn" and "Army of Darkness," the musical follows a group of young 20-something vacationers as they travel to a cabin in the woods. There, they discover a book called "The Necronomicon," which is filled with evil magic that turns Ash's friends into demons and brings the dead back to life. After watching his friends transform into monsters and being forced to lop off his demonically possessed hand, the callow Ash is forced to make a choice -- remain a coward or save the world from the forces of evil.

"This show is anything and everything I've ever wanted to do on stage at one time, hands-down," says Austin of the musical.

And who could blame him as the show will allow him to battle hordes of the undead with a shotgun and chainsaw, kiss the girl and save the day all within the span of two acts.

"Spider-Man" and "Drag Me to Hell" director Sam Raimi created the Evil Dead series, and while Raimi had no part in producing the musical, he gave it his blessing.

"You got to think Sam Raimi's the biggest director in the world right now, and for him to let these plays go out based on his creation is pretty huge on his part," says George Reinblatt, who wrote the lyrics and the script for the play. "There's nobody in Hollywood who would let that happen, but he's pretty cool about it."

The Toronto-based playwright says one of the reasons he thinks Raimi is so supportive is because the play helps to cement the legacy of the "Evil Dead" movies, which Reinblatt himself fell in love with during his late teens.

"Every play that's on Broadway these days, it's based on a movie, and all the movies that they're based on suck or are kind of lame," Reinblatt says. "And I just wanted something that's up our alley to do.

"Something with horror and comedy and blood, where people just have a fun night out and not make it like, 'Oh, I'm going to the theater it's going to be like artistic.'"

He adds that when film series star and B-movie icon Bruce Campbell first saw the musical, he was amazed by the fact that actors were willing to recreate the stunts and various action scenes that caused him so many injuries on-set. According to Austin, the secret to not getting hurt is simply a matter of practice.

"I've done quite a bit of stage combat in my day in various shows and classes that I have done," Austin says. "So I try to keep safety as the No. 1 priority when I do it and still try to make things as believable as possible for the audience."

Instead, Austin says the hardest part is pleasing the "Evil Dead" fans who have kept the series alive for three decades.

"The No. 1 challenge is to portray this character well enough for the fans of the series," Austin says.

"Ash is such an iconic image and such a persona in and of itself that it's just giving the Dead-ites exactly what they want."

Contact Joe Scott at movieshowjoe@gmail.com