The play was a comedy when it was first produced in Greece in 414, which makes its humor 2,416 years old. Humor is a pretty timely thing, it seems. It doesn't age like wine, but more like cheese. On top of being really old nonpasteurized humor, it's derived from political criticism and lofty irony -- silly Greeks -- making it almost unpalatable to the first TV generation that sat to my left, and blatantly archaic to the MTV generation that I come from.

So what does a director do with this sort of material? Splash in a little modernism when no one's looking.

The first scenes have the protagonists adhering, for the most part, to the Greek script. Lead Jarrod Rothstein as Makemedo and Marcus Sams as Goodhope spoke their lines so clearly and deliberately it was sort of disturbing.

The play is a story of two Greek men who are in search of a city free of politics and bureaucracy. Their plans are altered when they stumble upon Hoopoe, a speaking bird and leader of all birds.

While talking to Hoopoe, Makemedo devises a plan to make birds the new gods of Greek belief by claiming the sky the property of Cloud Cuckoo Land -- sort of the republic of the birds. The irony comes into play when Makemedo forms this nation and builds a government similar to the one he was trying to flee at the onset of his journey. Hilarious.

Along the way it becomes a musical, the chorus switching its standard lines in place of familiar songs, or singing those archaic lines to some other modern melody, always with accompanying choreography. In one scene, the scantily clad Poet, played by Mike Anderson -- who was quite a scene-stealer being the comic relief in a...well, comedy -- sang a few lines from Nelly's "It's Getting Hot In Herre."

How else do you make it funny? With one of the few disciplines of humor that is immortal: sexual innuendo. In the heavens there are barbarians, Neanderthal-looking people who, in this play, have affectionately been dubbed the "Jerkoffalots." Dusty Kimura played the one on stage. The Jerkoffalot costume was achieved by a messing of the hair, bushy eyebrows, a white toga with a gold belt, a confused facial expression and a giant erection visible through the toga. Lovely.

The production was professional, and the actors should be applauded for staying in character despite some of the ridiculous stage antics that were expected of them, but laughs can be found at a lesser expense.

Andrew Wallace can be reached at awallace@orion-online.net