Under the harsh glow of a spotlight, his face can contort into a thousand grimaces. As New York actor Howard Pinhasik poses for photographs for the upcoming play he stars in, The Miser, lights beat down upon his weathered face. And energy fills the air.

If posing for pictures is any indication of an actor's ability, The Miser, which opens Wednesday and runs through Oct. 27 at Eisenhower Auditorium, will be a hit.

The School of Theatre play is an adaptation of a script that was written nearly 300 years ago. But director Mark Olsen hopes to kindle it anew, breathing life into Moliere's The Miser with a cast that includes, among others, two Penn State students and one seasoned New Yorker.

The Miser is the story of a town and its resident bourgeois miser, a miserable being who obsesses that even his own children are out to rob him, a man who stretches the word eccentric to its very limits with a constitutional objection to saying the word "give."

The cast delves into a tangled mix of complex emotions — love, greed, and misery — all the while, engaging in a series of slapstick tricks and verbal wit.

Enriching the five-act play is a tableau of costumes that are as entertaining as the antics of the cast itself. Merely by gazing at the actors, one can imagine a time when feudalism wasn't just a lesson in a book, a time when capitalism was still considered an experiment flopping about on one unstable leg.

The script Olsen describes with obvious admiration: "Some even say Moliere's better than Shakespeare. It's action-filled and accessible. It has stood the test of time — because it's about religion, hypocrisy, greed and inhumanity."

Humanity, however, is the very quality that Olsen and the actors he directs have worked so hard to convey in their adaptation of Moliere's The Miser.

To fill the role of the miser, Olsen employed the talents of Pinhasik, who temporarily traded in the crowded city streets of New York to play the penny pinching Harpagon.

Pinhasik cites the challenge of playing Harpagon as reason enough to come to State College, a town that reminds him of his own bygone college days at the University of Ohio.

"It's such an amazing role," Pinhasik said.

To play any character, Pinhasik always draws heavily on his own experiences. But portraying the penny-pinching miser, Harpagon, was a bit more difficult for Pinhasik.

This role, Pinhasik said, required a different strategy. After all, he said with a laugh, he isn't evil or despicable in real life.

In this particular performance, the challenge for Pinhasik lies in making an unlikable character likable. If the audience can feel sympathy for his Harpagon, he said, he will feel like he has succeeded.

However daunting playing a seemingly heartless man may sound, Pinhasik insists that it is his fellow cast members who face the biggest hurdles.

"You have to bring character to these characters, whereas mine is written into the script," said Pinhasik, turning to his screen cohorts, Mallery McClure Mitchell (graduate-acting) and Gabriel Ortiz (graduate-acting), who play Elise and Valere, two young lovers.

Mitchell and Oritz have more in common than a passion for theater; they are long-time friends, also.

"We know each other so well," Mitchell said, "Oritz is an incredible person to work with. Anytime we work together it's a really special opportunity."

Friendship in life may have proved helpful for the roles each undertook in The Miser.

More than once, they must stare lovingly into the other's eyes, arms entangled, barely the width of a hair separating face from face.

As part of their academic program, Mitchell and Oritz must participate in one stage production a semester, but they can only hope they will land a role.

In costume, a satin pink ball-gown laced with frilly edges, Mitchell seems to epitomize femininity, while at the same time exuding a command of spunkiness. It's not glamour she seeks. And Hollywood glitz, she doesn't see in her future. It's the experience of theater that she loves.

"This is people," Mitchell asserted, "in the most heightened circumstances."