A cat in a hat, a woman with a bat, a guy with the blues in Mississippi, a woman with a much worse case of the blues in Louisiana and a family ready for an evening of witnessin' highlight the 2009-10 season at North Carolina's most venerable community theater.

 

Theatre Charlotte opens its 82nd season Sept. 10-27 with “ Seussical,” in which Jojo – “a thinker of strange and wonderful thinks” – meets musical apparitions from Dr. Seuss' storybooks, including Horton the Elephant, Gertrude McFuzz and Lazy Mayzie. Lynn Ahrens and Stephen Flaherty, who did “Ragtime,” wrote the score.

 

“Misery” is an adaptation of Stephen King's novel about a demented fan who kidnaps an injured romance novelist, and it runs Oct. 29-Nov. 8. Simon Moore altered it for the stage.

 

“Biloxi Blues,” second play in Neil Simon's trilogy about young alter ego Eugene Jerome, is set for Jan. 28-Feb. 7. It follows Eugene through encounters with an anti-Semitic sergeant and mildly exotic young woman in boot camp in 1943.

 

The theater moves one state west March 18-28 for Tennessee Williams' “A Streetcar Named Desire.” Stanley Kowalski, wife Stella and sister-in-law Blanche battle under the hot New Orleans skies.

 

The least familiar title, Constance Ray's loose-knit “Smoke on the Mountain,” is set in Mount Pleasant, N.C., in 1938. It runs May 6-23 and consists mostly of two dozen songs by the Sanders Family Singers, intermingled with humorous stories from this more or less devout family.

 

The theater will again put on “A Christmas Carol,” this time in a new production written by John Jakes, Dec. 3-13.

 

The themed reading/performance series “Just Do It” will run on six Fridays between Oct. 16 and May 28.

 

The 24-Hour Theatre Project will return April 9-10, with playwrights getting a subject Friday night, writing all evening and working with directors on the following day – for a show that Saturday night!