The characters may wear Phat Farm togas and see Apollo play the Apollo Theater in “The Seven, “but Will Power’s irresistible new hip-hop gloss on Aeschylus goes far beyond culture-clash gags. He, director-“developer” Jo Bonney, and modern-dance icon Bill T. Jones have reclaimed and revolutionized the little-known “Seven Against Thebes,” bringing ancient Greece to bloody, sinuous, boisterously modern life.

This hybrid ground isn’t exactly unexplored – a talented foursome gave Shakespeare a memorable hip-hop spin with “The Bomb-itty of Errors” back in the 20th century (1999). But that was strictly for laughs. Mr. Power, a prominent spoken-word/hip-hop performer, and Ms. Bonney have simultaneously subverted and augmented the Aeschylus play, finding resonances both humorous (the noselessness of both the Sphinx and Michael Jackson) and sobering (equating the interfamilial battles of Greek drama with black-on-black violence).

Mr. Power showed promise with his solo show “Flow” at New York Theater Workshop in 2003, and the theater’s long-term commitment to him – “The Seven “has gone through four years of development under NYTW’s auspices – has paid off handsomely. What was best-known before as a sort of placeholder between “Oedipus Rex” and “Antigone” becomes a launching pad for one of the most ambitious and entertaining experiments in town, a series of can-you-top-this mash-ups of Amadou Diallo, OutKast, and blaxploitation star Max Julien with the scouring language of the original text, performed in suitably stentorian tones by Charles Turner.

Those snippets are actually heard on one of the many records spun by the onstage DJ (a charismatic Amber Efe). “The Seven” gets off to a skittish start as she works a little too hard to assure the NYTW audience that it’s in good hands. (“Hey, don’t be afraid / If you’ve never hearda B.I.G.”) “Flow” had no such disclaimer: Mr. Power just came out and began his tale, assuming (correctly) that folks would keep up. Why this sudden defensive crouch?

But the uncertainty fades away quickly as we meet Eteocles (Benton Greene) and Polynices (Jamyl Dobson),the two feuding brothers whose struggle fuels Aeschylus’s play. Oedipus (Edwin Lee Gibson), here a Mephistophelian blend of James Brown and Walt Frazier, has decreed that his two sons must destroy each other. And while Aeschylus picks up the action as Polynices prepares to storm the gates of Thebes and wrestle the crown from Eteocles’s head, “The Seven” takes us much further back, to the brothers’ carefree adolescence and their individual struggles to break the “hoodoo” that’s been placed on them.

The cornrowed Eteocles is all sinew and corruptible energy, while Polynices’s long, lean body and soft features brand him instantly as the less aggressive of the two. The brothers agree to share the leadership of Thebes, rotating on a yearly basis, but Oedipus’s ghost preys on each son’s insecurities to foment the inevitable clash. When Eteocles protests that his nation enjoys peace and prosperity, Oedipus zeros in on his pride: “Nigga, peace don’t make you free.”

“Seven Against Thebes” is devoted almost entirely to enumerating the 14 combatants that will decide Thebes’s fate, and Ms. Bonney does a terrific job of using her gifted fiveperson chorus to flesh out the would-be usurpers and their Theban nemeses as well as the city’s terrified inhabitants. Their efforts are supplemented by Flaco Navaja’s sly, audience-pleasing performance as Tydaeus, Polynices’s pacifist companion.

But “The Seven” spins deep in other directions, too. Near the end of Act I, Eteocles recounts a stunning dream in which he feels Oedipus choking him, only to see Oedipus himself being choked by his father, and so on back to the dawn of time: “And my daddy starts to look so small / His curse just a piece of it all. “The idea of predestination is part of what makes Greek tragedy such a difficult sell these days, and this scene frames the concept in a way that is crisp, accessible, and entirely truthful to Aeschylus. Even more so is God’s terse response to Oedipus’s complaints: “You’re the man I need you to be / Not the man that you wanna be.”

The score by Mr. Power (with help from Justin Ellington and Will Hammond) careens from doo-wop to African chant to neo-soul, though it is always firmly anchored in the propulsive cadences of hip-hop. Still, the writers know their history: Oedipus’s material has a giddy 1960s vibe, and when he unwittingly confronts and kills his father at a crossroads, the music and imagery slide into a Robert Johnson-style Delta blues. (Here and throughout, Richard Hoover’s spare multilevel set gets a lift from the crisp, intelligent projections.)

And Mr. Jones’s bold, virtuosic work molds to the story beautifully, encapsulating everything from Oedipus’s torment to capoeira-style battles that are masterfully scaled to each performer’s ability. (It is here that Mr. Dobson, who elsewhere fails to match Mr. Greene’s coiled energy and charisma, really shines.)

In addition to that unnecessary intro, a calm-before-the-storm sequence among the clustered Thebans slackens the pace just when the action should surge forward. A scene where Eteocles consults with his soothsayers could also go, and the lone white character, an unctuous flunky played by Tom Nelis, slips over stylization into pandering now and then. But these qualms are minor ones in the face of Mr. Power’s layered, wise, and thrilling voice.

“The Seven” explodes Aeschylus backward and to all sides, but the future remains unexplored. At the end of “Seven Against Thebes,” the new king forbids any Theban to bury Polynices’s corpse. You may recall the response to this edict by another of Oedipus’s children – a daughter named Antigone. “The Seven” stops just shy of her defiant arrival, which raises a tantalizing question: Any chance for a sequel?

Open run (79 E. 4th Street, between Bowery and Third Avenue, 212-239-6200).