George Gershwin is probably the most revered of all Broadway composers, yet, oddly enough, none one of the dozens of musical comedies he composed is regularly revived. Gershwin (1898-1937) gave us the great American symphony (“Rhapsody in Blue”) and the great American opera (“Porgy and Bess”), but his musical shows are apparently considered too frivolous and silly – or, in the case of “Porgy and Bess,” too highbrow – to have a chance on middlebrow Broadway. What’s more, his principal shows of the 1930s are generally seen as too tied to their era to be engaging these days.

But Gershwin’s 1931 show “Of Thee I Sing,” which will be revived by City Center Encores this week,is surprisingly prescient. With its silly senators and singing-and-dancing Supreme Court justices, it seems like the sort of thing we would see on “Saturday Night Live” in the millennial era. And contemporary New Yorkers will no doubt find humor in a goofy, spoonerism-spouting president who mangles familiar expressions, as when Roosevelt’s slogan, “prosperity is just around the corner” becomes “posterity is just around the corner.”(I won’t be surprised if Encores throws in a reference to duck hunting or the “Decider.”)

The Great Depression, much like today, was a sarcastic, satirical era, one in which there was much topical humor on Broadway. That changed after the war: When “Of Thee I Sing” received a full-scale revival in 1953, it lasted for only 72 performances.Audiences in the Eisenhower era, apparently, had little taste for political satire.

Gershwin and his lyricist brother Ira more or less invented the musical political farce – or, at least, reinvented Gilbert & Sullivan for the jazz age – with their 1930 success “Strike Up The Band.” When they followed this with “Of Thee I Sing,” that 1931 show became, at 441 performances,the longestrunning book-driven show of the decade. It also won a Pulitzer Prize.

The final two Gershwin shows, “Let ‘Em Eat Cake” (a sequel to “Of Thee I Sing”) and the topical if not exactly political “Pardon My English” (both 1933) were considerably less successful. By then many other Broadway composers had gone a similar route, as in Irving Berlin’s “As Thousands Cheer” and “Louisiana Purchase” and Rodgers and Hart’s musical “I’d Rather Be Right” and film “The Phantom President.”

Many of these Depression-era productions were decidedly left-leaning, but the only subversive thing about “Of Thee I Sing” was how it presented the nation’s leaders in a silly light. If the Gershwins were delivering a political message, it’s that presidential elections are a kind of popularity contest, the male equivalent of a beauty pageant.

In the show, a presidential candidate named John P. Wintergreen is getting nowhere until he announces his plan to take the winner of an Atlantic City beauty competition as his first lady. He then wins the election on a “platform of love.” Complications – and hilarity – ensue when Wintergreen falls for a spunky secretary because she can bake corn muffins, and the spurned contest winner, who happens to be a descendent of Napoleon, enlists the entire French government to pressure the press to change his mind.

It isn’t surprising that “Of Thee I Sing” was the first musical comedy to win a Pulitzer Prize; what is surprising is that it won it on the basis of the book rather than the music. The plot, which was honored by the Pulitzer committee at the time, has been largely forgotten, but the music, which was overlooked by them, has become part of the American heritage.

The score is a forerunner to “Porgy and Bess” in that it consists of two kinds of songs: Gilbert and Sullivanlike choral pieces that move the plot and supply the comedy, as well as solo songs that give the show its melody, romance, and rhythm. All three of these standout solos – the title song, “Love Is Sweeping the Country,” and “Who Cares?” – have become well-known standards. (Others, too, are worthy of being extracted from the score, as Bobby Short showed when he recorded “A Kiss for Cinderella.”)

The Encores production of “Pardon My English” two years ago was one of the greatest things I’ve ever heard, and it will be an amazing thing to hear “Of Thee I Sing,”starring Victor Garber and Eric Michael Gillett, sung with a full orchestra and Robert Russell Bennett’s original orchestrations. Experiencing the familiar songs in their original context, as Gershwin wrote them, should prove as gratifying as hearing Duke Ellington’s actual orchestrations played by the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra.

In a way, John P. Wintergreen was right – in the immortal music of George and Ira Gershwin, posterity was, in fact, just around the corner.

‘Of Thee I Sing’ will be performed on May 11 & 12 at 8 p.m., May 13 at 2 p.m. & 8 p.m., May 14 at 6:30 p.m., and May 15 at 7 p.m. at City Center (West 55th Street between Sixth & Seventh Avenues).