I have been aware of and have had admiration for the comedy "Cornbury: the Queen's Governor," by William M. Hoffman-author of "As Is," the revolutionary play about AIDS, and librettist for the opera "The Ghosts of Versailles," with music by John Corigliano-and the late Anthony Holland, for about three decades, ever since Hoffman included it in a volume of "Gay Plays" that he edited. A fictionalized look at the historic Edward Hyde, Viscount of Cornbury and colonial Governor of New York and New Jersey, who is alleged to have dressed in extravagant drag for public occasions and offered as justification that, as he was representing his cousin, Queen Anne, he should dress like her, the play, reflects the wry, outsider's viewpoint evinced by a number of gay and lesbian works of the 1970s, with all the wit and polish one expects from Hoffman. The premiere of "Cornbury" was a staged reading at the Public Theater, on April 12, 1976, featuring the likes of Joseph Maher, Linda Lavin, Grayson Hall (of "Dark Shadows" fame) and Sigourney Weaver, but it never received a full production.

Theatre Askew, the queer theatre company started in 2003, is remedying that situation by presenting the stage premiere performances of "Cornbury" through February 8, at the Hudson Guild Theatre, 441 West 26th Street (between Ninth and Tenth Avenues), and I'm pleased to report, based on this excellent realization, by director Tim Cusack, guiding a first-rate cast, that "Cornbury" on the stage offers, as well it should, even more delights than it does on the page.

Set in 1717, in an English New York still in sometimes uncomfortable transition from having been Dutch New Amsterdam, "Cornbury" pits the flamboyant Governor, portrayed as aptly over-the-top, given to grandiose but always knowing delivery, by David Greenspan, against the dour, disapproving Dutch, led by the forbidding dowager Margareta De Peyster and Pastor Cornelius Van Dam, brilliantly cast against type, and played by sweet, lovely singer Bianca Leigh and ingenious comic actor Everett Quinton, of Ridiculous Theatrical Company fame, respectively, both relishing their villainous assignments. There's some singing in "Cornbury," with Greenspan, dressed to the nines, for his 'Queen Anne Birthday Ball,' by canny costumer Jeffrey Wallach, dispatching most notably a Baroque-style paean to the "Gracious Queen," with an extended cadenza that's, well, ridiculous, to wring down the first act curtain. Becoming a veritable gorgon as De Peyster, who would be Governor herself, Leigh makes her mark with her stentorian obbligato, against the rest of the Calvinist congregation, in a most bloodthirsty version of Martin Luther's "A Mighty Fortress Is Our God." And, in a spoken 'aria' added to the play just for him, Quinton's hellfire-and-brimstone Pastor Van Dam goes into virtual ecstasies expounding on his humorless faith.

Besides his drag, his most conspicuous consumption, and his debts, and his reputation as a "pervert," a "sodomite," a "catamite," another thing about Cornbury that his narrow-minded foes cannot tolerate is his tolerance. Cornbury harbors in his household such diverse characters as Spinoza Dacosta, his Jewish advisor, played by Ken Kliban; Africa, a slave and former Princess, given to exotic chants, cryptic statements, and fantastic fables of tribulation and violation akin to those of the "easily assimilated" Old Lady in "Candide," limned by Ashley Bryant; Munsee, a muscular Native American in a loincloth and war paint, with whom Dacosta finds rapport, portrayed by one Eugene the Poogene; and Marie, Lady Cornbury, our hero's French Catholic kleptomaniac wife, impersonated by Julia Campanelli, all cutting colorful figures.

Another Cornbury crime: for all his frills, besting Rip Van Dam, the Pastor's hunky son, a role realized by Christian Pedersen, in a duel, and, though he declines to take physical advantage of the lesser swordsman, seducing him, nonetheless, into renouncing his proper Dutch fiancée, Anna Maria Bayard, all lust-turned-to-dust, as depicted by Jenne Vath. And yet another: he comfortably cavorts, democratically, in a low dive, with tavern-keeper Molly-Nomi Tichman, who doubles as Queen Anne, seen in a vision by her imprisoned cousin-and barmaid Martha-Tara Best, who is also Dutch lady Sarah Vanderspiegel, participant in the plundering of Cornbury's finery-who join voices in a drinking song-cum-lesbian love duet.

Completing the cast and displaying versatility as, variously, a Cockney narrator, lowlife jailer Atticus Rockefeller, and Sir Richard Lovelace, Cornbury's successor as governor, even more extreme than he, is Erik Sherr.

Painter Mark Beard designed the sets, canvases hauled up and down on ropes and a cutout sailing ship that give the proceedings an improvisational, period feeling. Nathan DeCoux staged the vivid fight scenes.

Theatre Askew performs "Cornbury" on Mondays and on Wednesdays to Saturdays at 8 p.m., Saturday matinees at 2 p.m., and Sundays at 5 p.m. through February 8. For tickets at $18, or $15 for students and seniors, call 212/352-3101 or visit www.cornburytheplay.com or www.TheaterMania.com.