In “A Freeky Introduction,” the writer-creator, NSangou Njikam plays a quasi-deity, M.C., holy hedonist named Freeky Dee. He is a poet delivering sybaritic couplets above the thrum of R&B tunes. He is a missionary preaching the gospel of freakdom: “All of us are aftershocks of the Divine orgasm.” (The Big Bang, Freeky argues, was an explosive one.) The result is a sort of hip-hop hallelujah — a work of interactive theater that’s funny and familiar in its embrace of Black culture, yet flattened at times by a lack of specificity.
Freeky Dee is also a storyteller. He opens the show, now at Atlantic Stage 2 in Manhattan, with the tale of an eagle destined to fly, but born into a nest of bullying buzzards — a not-so-subtle allegory about one species that must resist the self-appointed superiority of another. Accompanied by DJ Monday Blue onstage, Freeky Dee is the sole performer who acts out these scenes, including his pursuit of a fine lady named Liberty (“French, with a splash of Africa” and wearing “a crown that looked like sun rays coming out her forehead” — you get it).
Njikam, who wrote and starred in the lively and semi-autobiographical “Syncing Ink,” is a fan of salacious reinterpretations. Under Dennis A. Allen II’s well-paced direction for this Atlantic Theater Company production, he delivers them with the charisma of a folkloric trickster. DJ Monday Blue’s sounds and samples lend a rock-steady groove — a feast of R&B and hip-hop staples. Whenever Freeky Dee sets up for a spoken-word set, the standing bass and sax lines of “Brother to the Night,” from the movie “Love Jones,” ring out. It’s a knowing wink — sonic choices that affirm Black cultural memory as its own special canon.
Audience participation also becomes a form of communion for Njikam and Blue. At times, we’re ordered to recite an affirmation-laden “Mirror Song” or do kegel exercises in our seats. The show is always edging the sacred up against the sexual, which set designer Jason Ardizzone-West reinforces, adorning square columns with divine contradiction: half evoke West and North African etchings of figures kneeling in spiritual offering; while the other lean into smut — peach and eggplant emojis, thirst drops, figures on their knees for a different purpose.
Make no mistake, “A Freeky Introduction” is grown folks theater. It’s for a specific set of open-minded viewers, even as Njikam’s intentions remain vague. With all of its slick allusions to freedom — Liberty as an evasive lover, the overlooked eagle finding its “fly” — the show hesitates to name the restraints and ultimately leaves the question of what we’re getting free from too open to interpretation. As it stands, freedom in this show is more of a vibe.
“A Freeky Introduction” yearns for more precision and a more grounded perspective. Perhaps, a female one to challenge or complicate Freeky’s lusty, androcentric pronouncements. Perhaps, Blue’s. Her omnipresence already suggests a fuller spectrum of feminine power, and, well, she already has a mic.
A Freeky Introduction
Through June 22 at Atlantic Stage 2, Manhattan; atlantictheater.org. Running time: 1 hour 40 minutes.
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