Bart Players present Stephen King’s Misery

Wednesday February 21st 2007

Stephen King’s chilling novel Misery, adapted for the stage by Simon Moore and performed by the Bart Players, opens in Stranmillis on March 1.

A best-selling romantic fiction novelist retires each winter to the snow covered hills of Colorado to write another work featuring his beautiful heroine Misery Chastain.

Driving while inebriated, he encounters severe weather and his car goes off the road. Instead of wakening in hospital, he comes to in a dilapidated farmhouse inhabited by the schizophrenic Annie, his ‘Number One Fan’.

She insists on nursing him, refusing to tell anyone of his whereabouts and his crushed legs mean he is virtually a prisoner dependent on Annie for pain relief.

When she discovers his new novel does not feature Misery, she forces him to destroy the manuscript and write another. Thus begins Paul’s descent into a living hell as Annie withholds pain relief, inflicts humiliation and degradation, forcing Paul, like Scheherazade, to write a new chapter every day simply to stay alive.

Misery is Bart Players’ 2007 Festival Production, and will be staged in the Canon Lindsay Hall, 183 Stranmillis Road, on Thursday March 1, Friday March 2 and Saturday March 3 at 8pm each evening.

Tickets are £6 each (block bookings and concessions by arrangement) and can be ordered from June Silcock, Apt 4, Redhill Manor, Belfast BT10 0PA. Telephone: 028 90623241. Email: junesilcock@hotmail.com

Tickets can also be purchased from Gotto Allsports, Stranmillis Road, Belfast or by contacting Clem Bell at 028 9020 2280.