What’s Japanese for “wow”? Anyone uneasy at the prospect of attending a Kabuki performance is advised — no, implored — to see what sort of madness Heisei Nakamura-za is up to. The esteemed Japanese troupe has breached the high-culture walls of Lincoln Center and mounted “Hokaibo,” an 18th-century sex farce with enough booger jokes and pratfalls to satiate adherents of Noh as well as those of “Knocked Up.” All fears of an edifying but dry night at the theater evaporate with the first appearance of Nakamura Kanzaburo XVIII, a modern Kabuki master who is also capable of whipping his company into a blissfully insane froth.

“Hokaibo,” a rare comedy in the annals of Kabuki, is about … well, it’s about all sorts of things. There’s a samurai who masquerades as a clerk, who then masquerades as a fern seller. And there’s a scroll that everyone seems to want, including Hokaibo himself (Mr. Kanzaburo, the current head of a Kabuki dynasty that stretches back to the 1620s), a murderer and rapist who’s passing himself off as a priest. But then folks catch wise to Hokaibo’s tricks, and suddenly a dozen warriors show up, brandishing cherry blossom branches and dismantling the scenery. Oh, and I skipped the part where two severed limbs play soccer with a paper lantern. In darkness, naturally, because Hokaibo has already blown the clouds in front of the moon. There’s also dancing.

In other words, “Hokaibo” offers a truly rare (at least for Western theatergoers) sensation that the narrative rulebook has been torn up and tossed away, if there ever even was one. Only a few things can be stated with any certainty from one scene to the next. One is that the leading actors will soon strike one of the highly stylized, cross-eyed tableaux known as mie. These often occur in the middle of an action scene and are always met with applause. The other sure bet is that each new setting will be odder and more crazily rewarding than the one that preceded it.

Not that “Hokaibo” skimps on pageantry: Each one of the many, many costumes designed by Arai Kumiko, Hiruta Noritaka, and Kurosaki Atsuhiro are sumptuous and intricate, and the fight choreography is as inventive as it is ludicrous. (The stage is outfitted with a raised stage for the second act, clearly as a way of cushioning all the onstage thuds and splats.) But after a dicey introduction that dumps a dizzying number of characters and situations on the audience, director Kushida Kazuyoshi never lets the opulent visuals get in the way of pure entertainment.

Mr. Kanzaburo repeatedly breaks the fourth wall — actually, the sixth wall, given the use of a hanamichi, a traditional narrow runway that extends several rows into the audience. In an intriguing new wrinkle, though, he jousts with the audience in English, poking gentle fun at Kabuki’s conventions and tossing out asides about James Bond, “Hamlet,” and metrosexuals with the shameless gusto of a lifer on the two-a-day vaudeville circuit. He makes for exceedingly engaging company even after Hokaibo’s nastier colors have been disclosed, and even after the faux priest has been slain. (That last plot detail is not a spoiler, by the way. Death comes early and often to these characters, with plenty of ghosts to contend with afterward.)

Serving as a resplendent warmup act for “Hokaibo” earlier this week was a one-night staging of the classic Kabuki drama “Renjishi.” Mr. Kanzaburo modified the story, a dance-heavy spectacle in which a lion educates its cub through a bit of tough love, to double the number of cubs; his two sons Nakamura Kantaro and Nakamura Shichinosuke (both of whom are also featured to strong effect in “Hokaibo”) mirrored each other superbly in the nimble dance sequences, and Mr. Kanzaburo’s confident stride became touchingly tentative as the lion grew concerned over the cubs’ safety. Inadequate translations scuttled the effect of a comic dialogue between two squabbling Buddhist monks, but when the three men re-emerged in full animal regalia, performing a spirit dance that included the whiplash-inducing tossing of their enormous manes in perfect synchronicity, the skill on display required no translation.

Mr. Kanzaburo has often spoken of Heisei Nakamura-za’s mission to recapture a looser, rowdier era in Kabuki’s history. (The form began as the province of actresses who were probably prostitutes as well, although the current tradition is to use all-male casts.) But the level of physical command and technical precision in “Renjishi,” including the terrific onstage instrumental ensemble, made it clear that Mr. Kanzaburo and his children, real and metaphorical, could do justice to any number of stylings, not just t he atypically comedic “Hokaibo.”

During one of Hokaibo’s discursive turns, in the middle of taunting the balcony inhabitants and singling out audience members like a malevolent Dame Edna, he blurts out, “I love New York!” New York’s inhabitants can now be divided into two groups: those who feel the same way about Mr. Kanzaburo, and those who haven’t seen “Hokaibo.” The remaining five performances provide a splendid opportunity to shift from one category to the other.

“Renjishi” closed July 16. “Hokaibo” until Sunday (Lincoln Center, 212-721-6500).