NEW YORK — Poetry isn't memorized a lot these days, but the rhymes of "Mother Goose" seem to stick to the brain upon first contact. "Jack and Jill/Went up the hill" and "Mary, Mary/Quite contrary" are companions for life, and welcome ones for the New York Theatre Ballet's performance of "Mother GOOSE!" which ended a brief run last weekend.
With a typically modest set at the Florence Gould Hall, consisting mostly of a sensibly sized old shoe fit for an old woman to live in, the NYTB put on its best breeches and frilly dresses and imped its way through an hourlong presentation. Accompanied on piano by Marina Porchkhidze and Vladimir Shonov, whose original score the two performed, the ballet offered fresh, clever pantomimes of such favorites as "Little Boy Blue" and "Little Miss Muffet," in which the transparent fakery of the approaching spider made it no less squeamish to watch.
"Mother GOOSE!" was created and choreographed by Keith Michael, and led onstage by such veteran company players as Danielle Genest and Steven Melendez. Transcripts of the poems were included in the playbill, but it was more fun to keep your eyes on the stage and guess what the dancers were acting out.
The mood was as easy and as precocious as a "Mother Goose" poem, like "The Three Blind Mice" segment, in which Genest, Keiko Nakamura and Melissa Sadler put on dark glasses and animal ears and tiptoed about with walking sticks, their tails as long and limber as jump ropes or giant strands of spaghetti.
The show was especially charming during "A Was an Apple Pie," when performers demonstrated the ingenious ways that you and your limber friends can transform yourselves into any old favorite letter. For instance, to simulate an "N," you merely require two people to stand straight a few feet apart, and a third to lean diagonally in between.
Even the shoe got into the act, opening up like a suitcase and doubling as a mini-stage for "The Little Suite," in which dancers turned themselves into mini-puppets for a run-through of "Little Boy Blue," "Little Miss Muffet and "Little Bo Peep."