JOFFREY OPENS WITH ‘CLOWNS’

The dressy first-nighters who greeted the Joffrey Ballet Wednesday night at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion weren’t prepared for Gerald Arpino’s “The Clowns.”

The partygoers expected something light and bright, something cheery, something funny.

They laughed, at the beginning, when dummy corpses dropped from the sky and sounds of atomic explosions erupted in the pit.

They tittered when the pathetic little hero gathered the fallen bodies in a heap and emitted the first of many silent screams.

They roared when the dead clowns came back to life and began to menace the leader.

They howled when the various white-faced mock-buffoons found themselves entrapped in a wild assortment of plastic tubes and bubbles that stretched, soared, throbbed and eventually all but engulfed the stage.

It took a while--too long a while--for the happy celebrants out front to realize that Arpino’s parable of 1968, revived after a hiatus of a dozen years, wasn’t intended to be a laff riot.

Eventually, however, the truth began to sink in. Arpino uses the circus as a grotesque metaphor for a doomed mankind. His multimedia ballet chronicles a grim cycle of death, rebirth and destruction. The deliberately amusing elements function merely as expressive counterpoint.

When the enterprising Joffrey company first performed “The Clowns,” many critics hailed it literally as a masterpiece. This critic, attending the West Coast premiere at Stanford in 1968, found it “shattering.”

It didn’t seem all that shattering this time. Part of the problem may be attributed to the audience. Atmosphere is a very important force in the theater.

Another part of the problem may relate to the ravages of time. What seemed so bold and so poignant in the age of Vietnam and flower children may seem a bit contrived and gimmicky in the cool, equally troubled light of 1987.

It isn’t that we have solved our problems. The subject of “The Clowns” remains all too pertinent in a world that must cope with the devastations of Nicaragua, Chernobyl and AIDS.

The basic difficulties probably lie with the props of Arpino’s modernism. What should be profound can become simplistic after a while. The choreographer/scenarist takes on the most cataclysmic of sociopolitical subjects. Even now, his sincerity is unmistakable, his daring admirable. But his dramatic devices tend toward the obvious, the glib and the slick.

His score--a primitive sound-effect collage by Hershy Kay that equates electronic noises with chaos and percussive cheer with sanity--poses yet another problem. It used to seem so brash. Now it bears the impact of a quaint relic.

Under the circumstances, one observes “The Clowns” with the fascination and respect one brings to an important period piece. One also savors its merit as extraordinarily crafty theater.

Arpino has devised a brilliant body language for his cast, a language that adroitly fuses traditional balletic devices with acrobatic feats with burlesque mime. He controls the dynamics of the piece with masterly precision, turning riotous frolics into violent confrontations with casual fluidity. He juggles wit, hysteria, terror and pathos with virtuosic ease.

Perhaps there’s the rub. For all the inherent noble intentions, feverish energy and clever construction, the ballet somehow seems too easy.

The performance, however, was dazzling--aside from a few glitches involving lighting (too dark at the outset?) and bubble expansion (too modest at the end?).

Edward Stierle, who happens to have been born two days after the world premiere, played the central clown--a strange combination of Everyman, Sad Sack and Christ figure--with wonderful dexterity and finesse.

Tina LeBlanc mustered the complementary sweetheart charades very pertly. Parrish Maynard and Jerel Hilding introduced compelling degrees of quasi-comic menace if not relief.

The costumes of Edith Lutyens Bel Geddes--blinding white with crucial primary-color embellishments in moments of agitation--looked as fanciful as ever. The special effects designed by Vernon Lobb and Kip Coburn continued to astound.

The remainder of the inaugural program found the company in top form as it surveyed some typically eclectic fare.

Ben Stevenson’s “Three Preludes,” a new addition to the Joffrey repertory, is a rhapsodic, often affecting, set of love duets that punctuate neo-classic lyricism, anno 1969, with cheap flashes of neo-Soviet bravura. Leslie Carothers and Philip Jerry glided through the graceful and grateful rituals with soulful suavity, to the stylish Rachmaninoff of Stanley Babin at a nearby piano.

The festivities opened with the elegant hand-me-down romantic flourishes of Arpino’s “Birthday Variations,” new last year. The pervasively deft ensemble was led here by the elphin Dawn Caccamo and the ardent Glenn Edgerton. Allan Lewis treated Verdi with respect in a particularly well-staffed pit.

The highlight of the evening, however, was the revival of Nijinsky’s historic “L’Apres-Midi d’un Faune” (1912), lovingly reconstructed by Elizabeth Schooling and William Chappel.

Young Tyler Walters conveyed the muted tensions and awakening eroticism of the Faun with just the right aura of narcissistic innocence and stylized strength. Charlene Gehm led the nymph quartet with irresistibly stilted elan.

The famous Bakst decors, recreated by Ralph Holmes, exerted their ageless exotic appeal. Chris Christensen conducted the Debussy score with perfectly languid sensuality.

This was the Joffrey at its best.