DANCE REVIEW : A Wolf at Ballet Theatre’s Door

American Ballet Theatre isn’t what it used to be. And life isn’t easy on the road.

The company returned to not-so-beautiful downtown Los Angeles Thursday night after a hiatus of nearly three years, having barely survived a series of devastating fiscal and artistic crises.

Finding the huge Shrine Auditorium unglamorous and the glamorous Music Center unfriendly, the management opted for an unprecedented visit to the Wiltern Theatre. Here it could savor intimate Art Deco charms while ignoring bad sight lines, limited stage facilities, an awkwardly submerged pit and a torn-up street out front.

The repertory for the five-performance stand was confined to a lightweight triple-bill dominated by a kiddie ballet. (A series of “Don Quixotes” will follow next week in Orange County.) Conspicuously absent from the tour roster were such stellar names as Fernando Bujones, Patrick Dupond, Sylvie Guillem, Julio Bocca and Alessandra Ferri.

Never mind. According to a statement from the company director, Jane Hermann, everything was all right, Jack.

“I am happy to report,” she wrote, “that the company is more vital and thriving than ever. . . . ABT is alive with enthusiasm and brimming with creative energy.”

There wasn’t much on opening night, unfortunately, to support that flight of cockeyed optimism.

The non-capacity audience, it must be noted, seemed to enjoy Michael Smuin’s new production of “Peter and the Wolf,” which brought the evening to a cutesy close. Those children in the crowd who could stay awake to the sweet end registered enthusiasm, too.

One could see why. Smuin, who encountered both success (“Anything Goes,” “Sophisticated Ladies”) and failure (“Shogun”) on Broadway after the demise of his glitzy choreographic career in San Francisco, has created an amiable dancing cartoon to accompany Prokofiev’s beloved tunes.

Peter prances and spins in an adorable sailor suit. His fine feathered friend flutters like a tippy-toe refugee from “The Firebird.” The Duck quacks, waddles and sputters like a delirious Disney reject, only to be gobbled up by a super-nasty Wolf in danseur’s clothing. The Hunters perform like a mock-military drill team from the Moiseyev.

That’s not all, folks. Carol Burnett, the opening-night narrator, exuded earthy whimsy while reading an updated text by none other than Larry (“MASH”) Gelbart. Tony Walton provided a neat Palekh-comix set and Willa Kim designed reasonably amusing costumes.

Somehow, however, it all should have been more fun. The dancing per se was minimal. It had to be, given the musical structure of the piece.

Smuin compounded the problem by working against the tone and dynamic of the score, interpolating bravura tricks, heavy-footed gags, intrusive sound effects and even raunchy accents where Prokofiev merely wanted innocent lyric repose. This was a wild and wacky show that plodded clumsily when it should have soared gently.

Gelbart’s descriptive puns embroidered the prologue. “Young Peter, being the hero, has a tune all to himself--the result of pulling the right strings, no doubt.” Strings , get it?

But every character in “Peter and the Wolf” has his or her own tune. Oh, well.

The explicit mime made the text redundant during the actual tale, up to and including the climactic moment when the Wolf literally regurgitated the Duck. The revisionist moral of the story: “If you don’t chew your food well, you always hear from it later.”

The eager cast (the first of several scheduled to be seen here) was hemmed in by a prefabricated set of charades. Keith Roberts executed the vaudeville routines of the prologue deftly. Gil Boggs (Peter), Cheryl Yeager (the Bird), Kathleen Moore (the Duck), Christina Fagundes (the Cat), Victor Barbee (Grandpapa), Ethan Brown (the Wolf) and the quintet of Hunters performed their cumbersome duties valiantly. Jack Everly was the accommodating conductor of the rather scruffy--under-rehearsed?--pit band.

The evening opened with Jiri Kylian’s “Sinfonietta,” which the Netherlands Dance Theater had introduced to the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion back in 1980--in the distant, golden days when our Music Center still cared about dance. Ballet Theatre brought its lovely duplicate to Costa Mesa last March.

Although the ensemble looked a little rough on this occasion--and the Janacek score sounded raucous--Kylian’s sophisticated manipulation of folksy manners retained its compulsion. The carefully plotted flights of union and alienation, the rhapsodic duets and tangled trios once again found appreciative resonance in the muscular speed of the ABT men, not to mention the heroic suavity of the ABT women.

The novelty of the evening took the incoherent form of “Moondance”--a world-premiere effort by young John Selya, who normally graces the corps de ballet. Using some homespun quotations and eclectic tunes by Moondog, a musico-poetic eccentric who spent most of the ‘60s and ‘70s hulking in Viking drag on Manhattan street corners, Selya has concocted a busy little suite that fuses pop sensibilities with highfalutin’ balletic exercises.

The styles, alas, are muddled, and the focus is fuzzy. Amid fleeting flashes of originality, Selya gives us easy effects and familiar quotations, ranging from anonymous Balanchine bravura to the finger-snapping cool that Robbins orchestrated into “West Side Story.” The distinction between second-hand banality and first-hand invention remains elusive.

Amanda McKerrow and the ever-underrated Johan Renvall executed the central pyrotechnics with elegant finesse. Selya strode on and off, looking appropriately quizzical, in Moondog’s horned helmet and ragged cloak. Charles Barker conducted the primitive gurglings with stoic cheer.