The 2008 Season for Theatre 98 in Fairhope has been announced.

• “Misery”, Feb. 15-17 and 20-24, by Stephen King, adapted for the stage by Simon Moore, thriller

The story — This stunning adaptation of the classic thriller is a tour de force for actors. Popular romance novelist Paul Sheldon retires each winter to Colorado to write another work featuring heroine Misery Chastain.

Driving while inebriated, he loses control of his car. He regains consciousness in a filthy, dilapidated farmhouse that is cut off from the outside world by a blizzard.

Annie, the schizophrenic occupant, is his No. 1 fan and she insists she will nurse him. His legs are crushed and he is virtually a prisoner dependent on her for pain relief. She discovers that his new book is not about Misery and she forces him to destroy it and write another.

Like Scheherazade, Paul must write a new chapter every day to stay alive.

• “Dearly Departed,” April 18-20 and 23-27, by David Bottrell and Jessie Jones, comedy

The story: In the Baptist backwoods of the Bible Belt, the beleaguered Turpin family proves that living and dying in the South are seldom tidy and always hilarious.

Despite their earnest efforts to pull themselves together for their father's funeral, the Turpin’s other problems keep overshadowing the solemn occasion: Firstborn Ray-Bud drinks himself silly as the funeral bills mount; Junior, the younger son, is juggling financial ruin, a pack of no-neck monster kids, and a wife who suspects him of infidelity in the family car; their spinster sister, Delightful, copes with death as she does life, by devouring junk food; and all the neighbors add more than 2 cents.

As the situation becomes fraught with mishap, Ray-Bud says to his long-suffering wife, “When I die, don't tell nobody. Just bury me in the backyard and tell everybody I left you.”

Amidst the chaos, the Turpins turn for comfort to their friends and neighbors, an eccentric community of misfits who just manage to pull together and help each other through their hours of need, and finally, the funeral.

• “The Trip to Bountiful,” June 19-21 and 25-29, by Horton Foote, drama

The story: This is the poignant story of Mrs. Watts, an aging widow living with her son and daughter-in-law in a three-room flat in Houston, Texas. Fearing that her presence may be an imposition on others, and chafing under the rigid and selfish supervision of her daughter-in-law, Mrs. Watts imagines that if she can get away and return to her old home in the town of Bountiful, she is sure to regain her strength, dignity and peace of mind.

The people she encounters on her journey confirm the essential goodness of humanity, and though her trip doesn’t end exactly as she had hoped, she is secure in the knowledge that the rest of her life will be enriched as a result of her last contact with Bountiful.

So she attempts to run away, and when she reaches a bus station on the last part of her short journey, she falls into the hands of a sheriff whom her son and daughter-in-law have put on her trail. The sheriff, a kindly fellow, allows her to complete the final stage of her journey, so she proceeds to Bountiful and makes a lonely pilgrimage to the scene of her old home.

Only too soon she learns that the friends of her youth have all died or scattered, and her home is no longer the spacious mansion of her memories but a crumbling wreck. But she has the supreme satisfaction of plunging her hands into the strength-giving earth, and this leaves her with a sense of that strength and dignity that will give her the courage to survive.

When her son and daughter-in-law appear on the scene to take her back to Houston, she consents to return quietly, secure in the knowledge that the remainder of her existence will be enriched as a result of her last contact with Bountiful.

• “Quilters,” Aug. 22-24 and 27-31, by Molly Newman and Barbara Damashek, comedy/drama/musical

The story: Ostensibly the story of a pioneer woman and her six daughters, “Quilters” blends a series of interrelated scenes into a rich mosaic which captures the sweep and beauty, the terror and joy, the harsh challenge and abiding rewards of frontier life.

Illuminating stories contained in various patches or “blocks” with music, dance and drama, the action depicts the lot of women on the frontier: girlhood, marriage, childbirth, spinsterhood, twisters, fire, illness and death. But, with this, there is also love, warmth, rich and lively humor and the moving spectacle of simple human dignity and steadfastness in the face of adversity.

In the end, when the various patches are assembled into one glorious, brilliantly colorful quilt, the effect is both breathtaking and magical — and a theatrical masterstroke which will linger in the mind and memory long after the house lights have dimmed.

For more information, call (251) 928-4366.