Shakespeare & Company, which plays out of novelist Edith Wharton's Lenox, MA, home The Mount, returns to what it knows best (next to the Bard) when it opens the "Wharton One-Acts" on July 10. The evening's title notwithstanding, only one of the plays is by Wharton. The Dilettante, adapted by Allyn Burrows, is based on a short about the deep, yet unconsummated, love between widow Margaret Vervain and Thursdale Pemberton, a dilettante who eventually betrays her by marrying another. The production's second one-act is taken from Guy de Maupassant's The Mistress, concerning an estranged Paris couple whose marriage more resembles a legal partnership than a union of love. Richard S. Burdick adapted the work.

Cecil MacKinnon will direct both plays. Antonia Freeland and John Sarrouf are featured in The Mistress, while The Dilettante stars Marybeth Bentwood, Diane Prusha, and Sarrouf. The double bill runs through Sept. 5. For information, call (413) 637-3353.

-- By Robert Simonson