Review: ‘Third Bird’ Doesn’t Quite Land

Prokofiev’s “Peter and the Wolf” is a children’s classic, an ideal introduction to the instruments of the orchestra. The production of the score that Works & Process has presented annually at the Guggenheim Museum since 2007, narrated by the fashion designer Isaac Mizrahi, has itself become a local classic.

Now Mizrahi, who has been the designer and director since 2013, has created a companion piece, “Third Bird,” with the composer Nico Muhly and the choreographer John Heginbotham. Why? The premiere at the museum on Friday provided no reason other than to have a little fun. “Third Bird” is charming and slight.

As in the Prokofiev original, each character in “Third Bird” is connected with an orchestral instrument or two, here played live by members of Ensemble Signal arrayed around the stage. For the bluebird, there’s flute and piccolo. For the duck, there’s oboe and English horn. The ostrich — the “third bird” — gets the heavier, unusual bass clarinet, and so on, through the cat, the grandfather, the ornithologist and the zookeeper.

Mizrahi explains all this at the start. He’s a terrific host, kid-friendly without condescension, an expert teller of bedtime stories, voices and all. His enthusiastic appreciation for how the instruments evoke character establishes exactly the right tone. And by adding instrument-animal pairings that Prokofiev did not, he and Muhly extend Prokofiev’s idea. A bass clarinet is like an ostrich. The orchestra contains more wonders.

Mizrahi’s new libretto is less wonderful. It’s a kind of sequel to “Peter and the Wolf,” set in a Central Park elegantly evoked by a skyline silhouette backdrop and the branches of a tree. The duck (Marjorie Folkman), having emerged whole from the stomach of Prokofiev’s wolf, returns to tell its adventure in pantomime. Chased by the Gwen Verdon-like cat (Lindsey Jones), it learns to fly. The ostrich, a new character (played by Brian Lawson), does not.

There are witty touches. Mizrahi, the narrator but also the designer, takes a moment to stop and fix the duck’s wolf-ruffled attire. The bluebird (Christine Flores, light and precise) is a ballerina, smug about her skills. Heginbotham plays the moon by simply sitting in white, high in the skyline backdrop. Muhly evokes the zookeeper (Macy Sullivan) with bouncy harpsichord and whirly tube, and Heginbotham’s choreography responds with some standard vaudevillian humor.

But “Third Bird” is awfully shaggy for an avian story. Eventually, a suggestion of a moral emerges, advocating acceptance of different shapes and abilities. (The flightless ostrich is the only character without a human head.) As in “Peter and the Wolf,” danger and even mortality flash briefly and an improbable resolution consoles, though here the resolution is a hoary joke (about New York snowbirds).

That’s typical. At one point, Mizrahi announces that the ostrich is about to do “a very special dance.” It isn’t very special. It’s just nice, as is everything else in the production, including the costumes — lots of casual wear ornamented with wings or duck feet. Like many sequels, “Third Bird” offers the pleasures of returning characters and performers, squeezing out something diluted from the original idea. It reflects a weaker light, but then again, so does the moon.

“Third Bird” was performed on Friday at the Guggenheim Museum.