Paul Kolnik Nathan Lane, left, and Burke Moses joke and sing and make the audience think in "The Frogs" at Lincoln Center Theater. Click photo for larger image.

NEW YORK -- On the one hand, it was planned (and has disappointingly turned out) to have only a short run, ending tomorrow, for the enjoyment of Lincoln Center cognoscenti. On the other, it's already had a more populist run of some 2,400 years, which shows no sign of ending.

In other words, Aristophanes' "The Frogs" (405 B.C.) has stuck around as long as the materialism, war-mongering, faddish aesthetics, sophistry and demagoguery that he ridiculed. Writing during Athens' slow decline throughout the endless and disastrous Peloponnesian War, Aristophanes wages mainly conservative satire against fads and innovations.

In the classic tradition, satire has generally been conservative. But its techniques have always been subversive in implication if not intent, so it has proved attractive also to those who attack the status quo. On this high-profile but short-lived occasion, Aristophanes' adaptors write from the left, not the right.

Those adaptors are Nathan Lane, Burt Shevelove and Stephen Sondheim. The latter two had their musical adaptation of "The Frogs" famously staged by the professional Yale Repertory Theatre in 1974 at the university swimming pool. That's soon after they had a big success with another adaptation of classic comedy, "A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum."

Baggy-toga comedy gives way to baggy-himation (a Greek toga) -- how could it fail? Consider a textbook description of Aristophanes as a writer who "weaves a web of fantasy, unsparing and often unfair satire, brilliant verbal wit, literary and musical parody, exquisite lyrics, hard-hitting political propaganda, and uproarious farce." Except for the satire and propaganda, that sure sounds like Sondheim in "Forum" mode.

In "The Frogs," Aristophanes sends Dionysos and his comic slave down to Hades to stage a debate between the tragic writers, Euripides and Aeschylus, bringing the latter back to the living because he gives better advice on how to prosecute the war. Shevelove substituted Shaw and Shakespeare, and Sondheim worked some musical magic, including a great "Forum"-like opening number. "The time is the present," they write; "the place is ancient Greece."

But that 1974 production never went anywhere. Then Broadway funnyman and wit Nathan Lane updated it further, added jokes, persuaded Sondheim to write more music and enlisted Susan Stroman to choreograph and direct -- the A Team!

As adapted by Lane, in partial perversion of Aristophanes, Dionysos is against the war and the chief target is status quo thinking, represented by the chorus of frogs. There's a joke about the frogs being French, but clearly they're Republicans. Dionysos (Lane) travels to Hades to bring back a dramatist who will wake America out of supine reliance on blinkered leaders. It's a protest against Bush, but except for a knock on "big bully bash frogs that make preemptive strikes and can't remember why" (the Iraq war easily takes the place of the Peloponnesian) it stays pretty generic, never getting down to passionate cases.

Mainly, "The Frogs" is a literate comic delight, one part funny banter between the quick-witted Lane and his henchman, played with deliciously dry, spiky humor by Roger Bart; one part gorgeous women artfully displayed; and one part a surprisingly intelligent and moving showdown between Shaw and Shakespeare, each represented by excerpts cleverly culled from their works.

There are plenty of contemporary references (Fosse, "Lion King," Frank Langella), lavish costumes by William Ivey Long and bungee jumping and ribbon dancing choreography. Hades turns out to be remarkably like hell as described by Shaw in "Man and Superman." And Lane and Bart are well supported by a cast including Burke Moses and Peter Bartlett.

So why is it closing after just 126 performances? Mainly, I think, because it falls short in just those areas where it's been pumped up for Broadway -- the production numbers, which, the gorgeous girls notwithstanding, are sometimes just plain sappy. And the reluctance to be too partisan costs it some additional zing.

Nonetheless, like Aristophanes in the original, it adds up to an entertaining mix of Gilbert & Sullivan, Shaw and vaudeville -- funny, but probably too brainy for its own good. It must have cost a bundle to mount, as well.