Reversal of fortune: Maltz Theater's managing director Trish Trimble and artistic direction Andrew Kato have the Jupiter-based theater on the verge of its best year ever as others are being forced to close its doors. (Brandon Kruse/The Palm Beach Post)

A spoof of an Alfred Hitchcock thriller, a show featuring 240 kids, an acclaimed drama about abstract artist Mark Rothko and two Tony-winning musicals from the 1960s.

This week, the Maltz Jupiter Theatre opens its ninth season with the expectation that it will be its best yet.

“It’s shaping up to be, yeah,” says artistic director Andrew Kato. “I think it’s our responsibility to create a season that is diverse and exciting, and from all indications that is what we have done.”

One measure of the company’s success in satisfying its audience is subscription sales. Currently, it is running about 700 above last season, approaching the 7,000 level, a reversal of the trend of the previous year.

“We lost subscriptions last year because of the recession, but that gave us more opportunities for single ticket sales,” explains Kato. “So we actually made more money, because subscriptions are discounted.”

He considers it very possible that the Maltz will set a new subscription record – more than 7,200 – by the end of the opening show, The 39 Steps, which opens on Tuesday.

Everything about putting together a mainstage season is strategic at the Maltz. As Kato notes, “The first show is not going to be as well attended as the others, because the audience is not quite down here yet. So often it is smart to do something on a smaller scale.”

The 39 Steps, based on Hitchcock’s 1935 film classic, features a cast of four handling dozens of quick-change roles. “The show will cost in the range of $200,000 to mount, the lower level of what we do,” says Kato. “Obviously our audiences know Hitchcock, so we were able to sell it off that name.”

Next will be perennial favorite Andrew Lloyd Webber’s early biblical tale, Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, in the slot between Thanksgiving and Christmas. Although it sounds like an exercise in chaos, the show will feature a rotating series of eight children’s choirs of 30 youngsters each.

“We definitely wanted to increase our family programming after The Sound of Music, and so putting kids in the show was a strategic choice to have families support their kids, coming to see them in their shows,” concedes Kato. “It’s not the only reason why we did it, but it is a reason.”

Joseph is light in tone, in contrast to the Maltz’s January 2012 show, Cabaret, about the rise of the Nazis in 1930s Berlin. “I think people recall it as more of a romp than it is,” says Kato. “I think a typical remark will be, ‘Gosh, I forgot how dark this is.’ “

The Maltz has built its reputation on musicals, but Kato is most excited about its coup of the season, acquiring the performance rights to Red, John Logan’s two-character drama about abstract expressionist painter Rothko. In the play scheduled for February, Rothko grapples with a major commission for the Four Seasons restaurant and instructs his new assistant on the tension between art and commerce.

Buoyed by the success last season with Twelve Angry Men, Kato hopes to include more dramas in the Maltz menu. “People tend to go for what is comfortable, but I think you can create theatergoers that are more adventurous,” notes Kato. “You have to take them on a journey and get them to trust you.”

For the final show of the season, though, as the subscription renewal drive begins, the Maltz will serve up the crowd-pleasing Jerry Herman musical comedy, Hello, Dolly!, based on Thornton Wilder’s The Matchmaker.

Tony Award winner Gary Beach (The Producers), who recently relocated to this area, will be prominently featured as penny-pinching Horace Vandergelder, and tap-happy director-choreographer Marcia Milgrom Dodge (Anything Goes) will helm the production. “We like to end with a bang, and we feel certain this will be a winner,” says Kato.

Beyond the show selections, the Maltz is showing its faith in its future by investing in new lighting equipment and acquiring its own scenery construction facility for the first time, instead of subcontracting it to an outside operation.

“We’re very fortunate that we not only got the shop at Florida Stage, but we were able to hire the people, and they’re highly, highly skilled,” says Kato. He does not expect the change to result in cost savings in the short run, “but we can decide now how we’re going to accomplish something. There’s more creative control on how things are engineered. I think it will feel upgraded.”

And if you think this season is impressive, Kato says – stealing a line from Al Jolson – “You ain’t seen nothing yet.” As The 39 Steps readies its opening, he is busy planning for next year’s expanded 10th anniversary season, about which he would only say expect 10 major events.

All the better to attract a larger audience. “We realize that there is still an upside in terms of an audience base. The good news is that people are coming and supporting us, but we find that even locally that some still don’t know what we do,” says Kato. “So our job is to get in front of them and make them aware of us.”

THE 39 STEPS:

Information: (561) 575-2223 or jupitertheatre.org