“Don’t touch the Duck! It’s bad enough that the Wolf ate her!” “Don’t touch the Wolf, it will eat you!” These are just a couple of the warnings issued by the security guards, in faux-stentorious voices, to the children who swarmed onstage after last Sunday’s performance of Peter & the Wolf, presented by Works and Process at the Guggenheim Museum's Peter B. Lewis Theater.

Sergei Prokofiev's musical fable, composed in 1936, has become a new holiday standard for young New Yorkers and you couldn't ask for a better reader than designer Isaac Mizrahi. Now in his fourth year at the podium, Mizrahi owns the text and relates the story of the impulsive boy who bags the sinister predator - with the help of the Bird - as if he had invented it.

Isaac Mizrahi (left) narrates Peter & the Wolf. Right, center: Rai Sato answers questions about her set design as audience members take the stage for a closer look. Photos: Peggy Roalf

The young performers of the Julliard Ensemble filled the theater’s narrow pit, with timpani and percussion section highly visible on either side of the stage. The orchestra was conducted again this year by the New York City Opera’s George Manahan.

With expressive gestures and just the right vocal inflection on the gee-whiz moments (as when Peter ropes the wolf), Mizrahi holds the audience in his hands. He adds a few asides of his own; when the timpanist and the percussionist join forces to emphasize the arrival of the hunters and their guns, he quips, “So you two work together?”

This year’s set design was created by Rei Sato and executed by Kaikai Kiki Co., Ltd., the art production company of Takashi Murakami. The young Tokyo-based artist filled the stage with characters whose form is based on the outsized paper-lantern-like figures of the Nabuta festival, and were illuminated each time the narrator referred to them. Once the hapless Duck was devoured by the Wolf, it’s light was extinguished, but it continued to glimmer from inside the dark creature, whose sinister eyes glowed red throughout the performance.

Performances continue Thursday, December 16 through Sunday, December 19, 2:30 and 4:00 pm. Works and Process* presents Peter & The Wolf, narrated by Isaac Mizrahi, accompanied by the Julliard Ensemble conducted by the New York City Opera’s George Manahan, with set designs by Rai Sato of Kaikai Kiki Co., Ltd., and lighting by Ji-Youn Chang. Guggenheim Museum, Fifth Avenue at 88^th Street, NY, NY. Tickets $35/$30. *Presented in conjunction with Carnegie Hall’s Japan Festival, Japan/NYC.

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