DANVERS — "The Rocky Horror Show" meets the former Danvers State Hospital this week in DYT Productions' adaptation of the sexually charged, cross-dressing musical smash from the 1970s.

The local production by Danvers Youth Theatre transforms the castle where young lovers Brad and Janet have run-ins with Dr. Frank-N-Furter ("the sweet transvestite from transsexual Transylvania") into Danvers State Hospital.

The hospital's signature Kirkbride building, with its gothic towers and turrets, has served as a backdrop in such films as the thriller "Session 9," said "Rocky Horror's" director Tim O'Donnell. It seemed fitting to turn Frank's castle into the former state mental hospital, he said.

To that end, one of the characters, Magenta, dresses up as a nurse instead of as a French maid. But the Danvers backdrop will not detract from the show many know line by line.

"It's still Rocky Horror at the end of the day," said O'Donnell, a 1999 graduate of Danvers High. The show blasts off tomorrow and runs through Saturday at 7:30 p.m., along with a midnight show Saturday night, at the Masonic Temple on High Street.

The original stage show was turned into the popular midnight movie, "The Rocky Horror Picture Show," during which members of the audience or actors re-enact the movie while the audience cracks jokes along the way.

When it rains, members of the audience spray squirt guns; When Brad and Janet use newspapers to cover their heads, the audience does so, too. When there's a marriage scene, the audience throws rice.

O'Donnell said the cast fully expects the audience to get into the swing of things. He even took some of the cast to a midnight showing of "Rocky Horror" in Harvard Square to get them used to the "shout back" lines.

"We are fully prepared for people shouting back," O'Donnell said. While audience shout-backs are encouraged, O'Donnell is asking fans to leave food, rice, hot dogs, open flames, lighters and squirt guns at home.

Confetti, newspapers, flashlights, rubber gloves, noisemakers, toilet paper and playing cards are acceptable, and the company will be selling audience participation kits with some of those items.

"This is the kind of show where people are going to do what they are going to do," O'Donnell said. When not on stage, cast members will sit in the audience and yell out the shout-back lines.

"Rocky Horror's" sexually charged appeal has crossed generations. While the show is risque, O'Donnell has toned it down. Still, it's not for kids.

"It's not as bad as it could be," O'Donnell said, "we are still sensitive to the fact we are in Danvers, Mass."

Chris Pitts, 22, of Wenham, plays the lead, Frank, in fishnet stockings and a corset. Its a role made famous by Tim Curry.

"I'm a big fan of the movie," Pitts said. "It's a role I wanted to play for eight years now." Pitts studies theater performance at Wagner College on Staten Island.

Michelle Drapek, 20, of Danvers, is a Boston University student studying international relations and a big fan of the movie, but she was unable to make the field trip to Cambridge.

However, her younger sister, Colleen Drapek, a recent Danvers High graduate who is also in the cast, did attend the midnight showing. Michelle said her sister's program came back full of rice.

"I've been preparing for some of the worst shout back lines," said Michelle Drapek, who will play both the usherette at the start of the musical and Magenta, one of Frank's servants.

"It's an interesting show to do," said Nick Ortolani, 20, of Danvers, who plays the straitlaced Brad. "It's challenging in many ways. It pushes you as an actor. It's good it's coming to Danvers," he said, because the show has appeal to young people on the North Shore.