When I first approached Misery, I wasn’t drawn only to its tension and terror. What struck me was the intimacy of its violence—the way love, obsession, and imagination can twist together until they become indistinguishable. At its core, this play is about two people—both lonely, both desperate in their own ways—locked in a relationship neither can escape. Annie’s “love” is a yearning to matter, to hold onto something that gives her life meaning. Paul’s struggle is the universal one of trying to reclaim his voice when someone else has taken control of it; a reflection of both historical and current circumstances.
I see Annie as a woman lost inside her own fantasies, where books offer both comfort and control. We’ve all, at times, reached for stories to soothe us, to escape a reality that feels unbearable. But Annie shows us what happens when that escape becomes a prison, when the lines between fiction and life blur until love itself becomes fatally destructive.
Paul, meanwhile, is forced to navigate his survival by playing along, manipulating in return, and tapping into the very creativity that once freed him. His writing becomes his way to endure, his way to fight back, his way to be free. With Paul’s need to survive and Annie’s need to control, we see how fantasy and stories can save us, but also how they can imprison us.
What fascinates me is how fear sharpens instincts, exposes vulnerabilities, and awakens deep triggers we may not even know we carry. Annie and Paul are two mirrors held up to one another—one consumed by her need to possess, the other by his need to escape. Watching these two people collide is like watching fire and ice in the same room—strangely intimate, inevitably volatile, and extremely dangerous.
In the end, Misery leaves us with a truth both beautiful and terrifying: devotion can become captivity, love can curdle into obsession, and the very fictions we cling to for comfort can easily unravel us.
Adam Thatcher
Save the Date Alert