The play’s the thing at the Peterborough Players, but this summer, the stage will share star billing. Work began last fall on a $1.4 renovation of the stage and backstage area. When the season opens, the actors, designers and technical staff will have a new place in which to play.

It’s fitting that “the Jims” – James Whitmore and James Whitmore, Jr. — will get the first crack at the new stage in Tuesdays With Morrie, which runs from June 21 to July 9. A two-character adaptation of Mitch Albom’s book of the same title, the play describes Albom’s relationship with his former professor who was wasting away with ALS, or Lou Gehrig’s disease. Every Tuesday Albom, now a famous sportswriter, flew from Detroit to Boston to spend some hours in “a class in the Meaning of Life.”

The book was a huge bestseller. Players’ managing director Keith Stevens anticipates a big hit at the Players, too, because veteran actor James Whitmore has proved a strong box-office draw in past appearances. “Tuesdays with Morrie will start the season with a bang,” Stevens said. The show runs for three weeks.

Last summer, “the Jims” appeared in a hugely successful run of Inherit the Wind, for which Junior won a New Hampshire Theatre Award as best supporting actor in a drama.

The Gin Game runs from July 12 to July 23. Last seen here in 1992, the 1978 Pulitzer Prize winner is about two ornery senior citizens stuck in a home for the aged. “I’ve got Carmen (Decker) and Warren (Hammack) and they’re both spectacular,” said Players artistic director Gus Kaikkonen. “It’s a vehicle for them. It’s a serious comedy.” Decker, another audience favorite, has been in seven previous Players productions and also won a New Hampshire Theatre Award for her supporting role in last season’s Solidarity. Hammack, who made his Players debut in Solidarity, lives in Nelson.

The next offering is Hobson’s Choice by Harold Brighouse. It runs from July 26 to August 6. “It’s a lost treasure,” Stevens said. “It was big in the day.”

A Hobson’s choice is a choice without a real alternative like “your signature or your brains on this contract.” The play, written in 1915 but set in England in 1880, is a period comedy about the conflict between Hobson, a domineering father, and his spirited willful daughter Maggie. “I saw a revival in New York,” Kaikkonen recalled. “It was very, very unexpected. It’s a terrific play.”

Michael Page returns to play the choleric Hobson while newcomer Dee Nelson is Maggie. The play reminds Stevens of Mr. Pim Passes By, another “lost treasure” that pleased playgoers during the 2002 season.

“People have said it’s OK to do Shakespeare, but do one we’ve never seen,” said Gus Kaikkonen. He was happy to oblige with The Winter’s Tale, which runs from August 9 to August 20. “It’s one of my favorites,” he said. “Shakespeare was at the height of his powers. It’s everything he ever wrote in one play. It starts out with two acts of serious drama, followed by two acts of sheer comedy. The final act is a beautiful resolution.”

Kaikkonen himself will play Leontes, the King of Sicily, who nearly destroys family and country with his jealousy. Other familiar cast members include Page, Hammack, Kraig Swartz, Kathy Manfre, and Kevin Kelly along with newcomers Nelson and Russ Anderson. Jana Tift, who helmed last year’s production of You’re A Good Man, Charlie Brown, will direct.

Fallen Angels by Noel Coward follows Shakespeare from August 23 to September 3. Kaikkonen describes the 1925 play as “pure comedy” in which two married women, good friends, await the arrival of the dashing Frenchman they both loved before they married. Competition and complications ensure amidst much witty Coward drawing room dialogue. “It’s quite swell,” Kaikkonen said. The cast includes Players favorites Swartz, Jon L. Egging and Dale Hodges, along with newcomers Nelson and Karron Graves. Kaikkonen will direct.

The mainstage season concludes with an adaptation of Henry James’ classic ghost story, The Turn of the Screw, which closes the season from September 6 to September 17. “It’s a very good version of the novella,” Kaikkonen said. The ingredients: a young governess, two unusual children, a remote country estate and, possibly, ghosts. Kaikkonen particularly enjoys thrillers. This two character play stars Graves and Hammack.

Throughout the summer, the Second Company will entertain families with adaptations of the children’s classics Charlotte’s Web (which runs from June 24 through July 22) and The Secret Garden (which runs from August 12 through August 19).

The new stage should make presenting the season easier for the Players. “There’s a lot of good stuff about the new stage,” Kaikkonen said happily. “A fly loft, real wings, no slanting floor and no squirrels and rain coming through the roof.”

The new stage will have true flexibility. It can be configured to create an orchestra pit, which will allow the production of more musicals in the future. There are places for trap doors, and there’s a new lighting system. There will be room in the wings so that performers can move around easily. “It was terrible back there,” Stevens said.

Although many of the changes will be invisible, audiences should see more variety in the sets. The ability to fly scenery and the elimination of some old structural beams will give set designers more options instead of doing “the same trick over and over,” Kaikkonen said. “We now have a stage like Broadway, a real stage instead of a platform,” Stevens boasted. In addition, three rows of seats will be added, increasing the total capacity to 250.

The new stage is a significant step forward for the company that creates opportunities for more ambitious productions and perhaps, in time, a longer season. But the tradition of presenting a theatrical smorgasbord should continue. “A season should be a vast laboratory of theatrical work,” Stevens said. “People don’t want to see the same thing over and over again. There’s an enormous variety of choices this summer, it covers the whole experience of theater.”