Director Brendan Burke likes to provoke Shadowland’s audiences with contemplative subject matter, with moving performances and sometimes with flat-out hilarity. By choosing to stage Charles Morey’s adaptation of Tailleur pour Dames by Georges Feydeau, he hits on all three. The Ladies’ Man has been called “delightfully lowbrow,” a tale tangled “with infidelities, mistaken identities, naughty upper-class protagonists and equally frisky servants,” plus five slamming doors that punctuate the patter and keep the racy action moving. This contemporary take on the work of that master of French farce combines sophisticated humor with low comedy – slapstick and visual gags that somehow work on modern audiences who, let’s face it, need a little genuine comic relief now and then. We will be moved to guffaw while contemplating the bigger meanings.

What bigger meaning, you wonder? Consider the consequences of telling a “tiny little, hardly noticeable lie.” This occurrence, perpetrated by a mischievous French doctor on his suspicious young wife, turns into a gigantic, elaborate lie in which everyone gets caught up: his monstrous mother-in-law, meddlesome servants, a jealous Prussian soldier and even a patient with an outrageous lisp.

Morey’s acumen for adapting 19th-century classics like The Count of Monte Cristo, A Tale of Two Cities, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Dracula and The Three Musketeers is matched only by his original plays: Laughing Stock, Dumas’ Camille and The Yellow Leaf. Premiered at the Pioneer Theatre Company (where Morey has served as artistic director since 1984), they have gone on to productions at professional theatres across the country.

With a cast that includes Steve Brady as Molineaux, Wayne Pyle as Etienne, Michael Irvin Pollard as Bassinet, Meghan Wolf as Suzanne, David Smilow as Aubin, Ashley Ellenburger as Yvonne, Liz Zazzi as Madame Aigreville and Molly Parker-Myers as Marie, The Ladies’ Man opens at Shadowland Theatre in Ellenville on Thursday, August 18 and runs through Sunday, September 11. Shows start at 8 p.m. on Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays and at 2 p.m. on Sundays. For ticket reservations and further information, call (845) 647-5511 or visit www.shadowlandtheatre.org.