Jenny Lyn Bader

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Gerry Goodstein

Ideal Man James Kiberd is surrounded by, from left, Abbie Killeen, Elizabeth Hess, Kari Swenson Riely and Janine Barris (front) in “Manhattan Casanova” at Hudson Stage in Briarcliff Manor.

An attractive but emotionally defensive psychiatrist who disapproves of impetuous romantic behavior learns that four women she knows (a patient, a former patient, a friend and a waitress) have all been seduced by the same man. When the psychiatrist meets the man, she falls head over heels in love with him, too.

They banter, they parry, he gives up his promiscuous ways, and she lets her hair down. By the time the credits roll, she has given up her career and turned warm and fuzzy, thanks to a wedding band and possibly a powdery-fragranced baby.

But Jenny Lyn Bader, who was not born when Doris and Rock were playing virgin-and-the-wolf games on screen, wrote “Manhattan Casanova” in the 21st century and for the stage. And gender stereotypes are two of her least favorite things.

“I don’t think it’s a play about how men are idiots,” said Ms. Bader in a telephone interview from her apartment on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. But female characters are crucially important to her.

“I don’t like the divide between ingénue and character actress,” she said. “You always have one woman who’s lovely and one woman who’s funny. Or one who’s smart and one who’s dumb. I’m interested in getting beyond stereotypes like that.”

So in “Manhattan Casanova,” which opens on Friday as the fall mainstage production at Hudson Stage in Briarcliff Manor, the characters behave a little differently.

Dr. Charlotte Kaplan (Elizabeth Hess) and John Casey (James Kiberd) are equally forceful, verbally gifted and commitment-phobic. They meet at a neighborhood cafe where she is sitting alone, reading Gabriel García Márquez’s “One Hundred Years of Solitude.” She resists his efforts to strike up a conversation.

John: “Your hostility is dazzling.”

Charlotte: “Your approach is transparent.”

John: “You’re the first person to notice that.”

Charlotte: “You must meet a lot of blind people.”

John isn’t a bad guy, really. He sincerely loves women and knows how to make them happy: by doing romantic things (e.g., reciting French poetry) and trying to be whoever their ideal man is. Unfortunately that rings hollow for him (since he’s not being himself), which may be why his attentions are short-lived. Thus the title.

“The label tells you one thing about the person, but it’s not a totally derogatory term,” says Dan Foster, a Hudson Stage co-founder. “You would never call it ‘Manhattan Womanizer.’ Casanova is a more benevolent term.”

Yes, Ms. Bader’s play does seem to be conceived from a woman’s mindset, he said, “but it’s an enlightened woman’s point of view.”

Olivia Sklar, another Hudson Stage co-founder, is pleased with the production, which recently moved rehearsals from Manhattan to Westchester.

“It feels like the first really sexy piece we’ve done,” she said. She describes it as a “delicious, witty romantic comedy” but hastens to add that the play is also deep, as all good comedy is.

Sometimes the laughs come from the pain. “Manhattan Casanova,” like some other works of popular culture (HBO’s “Sex and the City” comes to mind), does not present the urban singles game as particularly pleasant.

“It says that it’s a jungle out there,” Mr. Foster said. New York may be so huge that the relationship possibilities seem endless, he added, but “you do have to make an emotional leap, putting yourself out there to be judged” over and over again.

Not everyone involved can speak from recent experience. Mr. Foster, who lives in Croton-on-Hudson, has been married for 21 years to the actress Liz Callaway (she originated the role of the wife in “Miss Saigon” and replaced Betty Buckley in “Cats”). Ms. Sklar, who also lives in Croton-on-Hudson, has been married for more than 30 years to Dr. Peter Powchik, a psychiatrist (who, she said, is looking forward to seeing his profession portrayed in a comedy). Ms. Bader is celebrating four years of marriage to Roger Berkowitz, a political studies and human rights professor at Bard College.

Ms. Bader met her husband online, incidentally, but points out that she had already written a draft of “Manhattan Casanova” before she met him. Any resemblance to former boyfriends living or dead is out of the question.

Directed by Richard Caliban, “Manhattan Casanova” is something of a departure for Hudson Stage, which was founded in 1999 by three actors. (Mr. Foster, who now directs, refers to himself as a “recovering actor.” Denise Bessette is the third co-founder.)

“We wanted to kind of break the mold a little bit,” Mr. Foster recalled, describing the company’s goal as “making challenging choices but remembering that you are there to entertain.”

Their first plays were presented in what is now the Julie Harris Theater at the Clear View School in Briarcliff Manor. A year and a half ago, Pace University invited Hudson Stage to become a company-in-residence and renovated a space for its productions. The Woodward Hall Theater, on the Pace campus in Briarcliff Manor, is the company’s present home.

The founders stress that they consider a season’s balance important. The last mainstage production was Gina Barnett’s “After All,” a futuristic social drama set in postapocalyptic New York. The spring 2007 play is “The Retreat From Moscow,” William Nicholson’s portrait of the end of a marriage.

Hudson Stage also does staged readings throughout the year. The next, on Dec. 8, is Jeff Wanshel’s “Modern Entrepreneurs,” described as two one-acts about manipulative relationships. In January, a project involving Briarcliff High School students will be directed by a Bard student. In April, the Tony Award-winning actress Judith Ivey will direct a reading of Kathryn Rossetter’s “Starving, Hysterical, Naked,” which deals with second-class citizenship and contemporary culture’s obsession with winning.

For the moment, though, the mood onstage is dark, brittle comedy. “Manhattan Casanova” pits a compulsive seducer against a woman whose idea of pillow talk is, “I don’t need morning-after maintenance.”