From the opening scene in which the young lovers rush in from the garden — she, flushed and panting, he with his shirt tail suspiciously untucked — to the final tableau — in which the Miser hugs his cash box while the cast dances to an appropriately chosen 20th century tune, we are helplessly pulled along by the fun.

At the eye of this comic storm is Mitchell Milan as Harpagon the Miser.

Looking and sounding like he could slip intact into the Fagan role in the musical "Oliver!," Milan turns the set's only functional furniture — a circular ottoman — into a mini-platform for his physical manipulations.

Watch his visual punctuation as a crooked finger, an arched eyebrow, or a pointed toe emphasizes the nonverbal communication. Listen for his dialogue dressed up in baroque curlicues of volume and emphasis and for the lines that are thrown away with innocently calculated understatement — and are all the funnier for it.

The production is not prettified, although Karen Archibald's grandly decaying set and Peggy Krock's costumes offer layers of interesting detail. Nor is it overly intellectualized. Maltby's choice of the playable prose translation by David Chambers and her keep-'em-laughing directorial style make the play always accessible.

This worked for Moliere 300 years ago when he made fun of social manners, and it continues to work for us today. The character comedy that arises from a man so fearful for his gold that he buries it in the garden and guards it with Dobermans plays with a modern satiric ring.

Jennifer Robideau as Harpagon's daughter Elise and Jeremy Colvin as his servant Valere support the central character like baguette diamonds support a solitaire. They are articulate, colorful and willing to subsume themselves to the characters' extravagant emotions. The set-piece debate over Harpagon's "treasure" is clearly the play's best moment, with Harpagon thinking gold and Valere imagining Elise.