GREEKS BEARING (BAWDY) GIFTS

If there's an ideology in "Lysistrata," the antiwar play by Aristophanes, it's the idea that a comedy 2,400 years old can still make us laugh -- even when the double entendres and smutty jokes are delivered in Greek to an English-speaking audience of contemporary New Yorkers who not so long ago had Rudy Giuliani as mayor.

If Giuliani were still in office, there's no telling what he might have done to ban a theatrical cast of horny women from making risqué references to thick cocks and leather dildoes, and hornier men from making anguished, comical displays of their monumental hard-ons. But judging from the reception the other night at City Center, where "Lysistrata" is being performed by the National Theatre of Greece (through Sunday), our censorious former mayor would have found it impossible to convince the audience that the production was anything other than classy, pleasurable, vibrant and, yes, timeless entertainment.

As staged by director Kostas Tsianos (who also translated the ancient Greek text), this "Lysistrata" had the flavor of a rollicking, tuneful musical comedy. Both ethnic and authentic, it's by far the best production of the play that I've ever seen. With the help of engaging music, colorful costumes, and especially striking choreography, Tsianos transforms the Greek chorus from its usual role of reflective, collective commentator into a vivid, earthy, individualized carnival of peasant soldiers and housewives. Their seamlessly woven songs and dances have an effortless, genuine quality.

In a director's note, Tsianos writes about the Dionysian rites, fertility ceremonies and improvised phallic songs from which Aristophanes's play originated. The production itself turns out to be a successful echo, however distant, of those origins.

Lydia Koniordou, as Lysistrata, is the show's galvanizing force. She persuades the women of Greece to end the Peloponnesian war, which has been going on for 20 years, by 1) refusing to have sex with the men until they quit fighting and 2) taking possession of the Acropolis, where the State Treasury keeps the money for financing the war.

Her strategy is nothing like a hippie-dippie, make-love-not-war plan, as so many productions played it during the Vietnam era, but rather a straightforward fuck-for-peace plan. My guess is that Giuliani would object to that, too.