THEATER PREVIEW:

With September now only a calendar flip away, local theater groups are busy preparing their initial offerings for the upcoming 2008-09 season.

A few — such as “Godspell” and “Dial M for Murder” — have been around the block a few times, but most of the newcomers will be seen locally for the first time. Some for the first time anywhere.

“Dial M” ushers in the new season Sept. 12 at the Newport Theatre Arts Center. A thriller by Frederick Knott that became a riveting Alfred Hitchcock movie a half-century ago, the drama focuses on a wife-killing plot gone awry.

That same weekend, South Coast Repertory also will turn back the clock, to the early 1900s, with a world premiere. “An Italian Straw Hat” is a new musical, commissioned by SCR, with traces of vaudeville, ragtime, light opera and barbershop quartet sounds.

Vanguard University kicks off its new season with “Godspell,” the rock-gospel musical that’s made inroads into the local theater scene for the past three decades. This show raises its curtain Sept. 19.

“Bat Boy” has nothing to do with baseball, as patrons of the Costa Mesa Civic Playhouse will discover when the show opens Sept. 26. This one concerns a strange boy with pointy ears trying to be “normal” and, yes, it’s also a musical.

Gordon is dead, but his cellphone keeps ringing. Would you answer? That’s the intriguing question posed by Sarah Ruhl’s new comedy “Dead Man’s Cell Phone,” another world premiere at South Coast Repertory, opening Sept. 27.

Once we get through September, there’s a three-weekend gap between local theater openings. Then two producing groups in Costa Mesa will resurrect a pair of period plays.

“Pride and Prejudice,” Jane Austen’s mannered comedy, opens Oct. 24 at Vanguard University. And “The Heiress,” a 1947 play about life in 1850s New York, will be revived at South Coast Repertory that same weekend.

Newport has the English farce “See How They Run” ticketed for a Nov. 14 opening, and “The Color Purple” has a Nov. 18 engagement at the Orange County Performing Arts Center. Then comes the holiday season and SCR’s annual production of “A Christmas Carol,” bowing in Nov. 22.

A reprise staging of “It’s a Wonderful Life” is planned for Vanguard, opening Dec. 4, while “La Posada Magica” arrives Dec. 13 at SCR. Then the show with nine lives, “Cats,” shows up at the Center Dec. 16, bringing plenty of “Memory” with it.

Whether your taste runs to old standards or new projects, the local theater circuit will have plenty of shows to satisfy it as the new season unfolds.

TOM TITUS reviews local theater for the Daily Pilot. His reviews appear Thursdays.