The prologue and first act of the Don Quixote that the Bolshoi Ballet and Orchestra presented at the Wang Theatre last weekend were a vision of Bolshoi Future: colorful, coherent, characterful, and compelling, with choreography (credited to Alexei Fadeyechev) that makes sense and dancing (not to mention backbending) that’s second to none. The rest of the ballet joined the company’s Raymonda in returning us to Bolshoi Past: erratic in casting, choreography, and characterization. Maria Alexandrova’s Kitri/Dulcinea carried the Friday-night performance; Anna Antonicheva’s did the same on Sunday afternoon. But the Bolshoi still looks to be in transition between outgoing artistic director Yuri Grigorovich and new man Alexei Ratmansky.

The prologue had Don Quixote reading before a single candle under a timbered ceiling, in a minimal set that bespoke both his dignity and his straitened circumstances. The complaints of the three housewives who’d been victimized by Sancho Panza were treated with similar restraint. Alexey Loparevich’s Quixote was distracted rather than doddering, a hero of another time; Alexander Petukhov’s Sancho was a regular Renaissance joe. The Barcelona backdrop of act one was a rainbow of pinks and yellows and sea blues, its harbor defined by a jetty that was a witty pun on the company’s accomplished jetees. And the stage, effervescent with Catalani in gold, orange, and brown, was as vibrant as the Bolshoi’s Raymonda had been moribund. Built along the lines of former Bolshoi star Nina Ananiashvili, with long, voluptuous arms and legs, Maria Alexandrova (who shone as Raymonda’s friend Clemence on Wednesday) was a confident, almost predatory Kitri, running out to get the latest news from her friends and not always pleased with what she heard. Anna Antonicheva was neater and less flamboyant, though her traveling beats on pointe and Italian fouettes were beyond cavil. As Alexandrova’s Basil (here not a barber and with no other visible means of gainful employment), Yury Klevtsov boasted an agreeable Errol Flynn affect: virile enough to hold Kitri’s attention, easily distracted by other charms. Even as he hoisted Alexandrova with his right hand in the traditional star lift, Klevtsov used his left hand to challenge Gamache to bring it on. As Antonicheva’s Basil, Dmitri Belogolovtsev (the over-the-top Abderakhman in Wednesday’s Raymonda), put less in the window but had more in the shop. Victor Alekhin’s Gamache was Gainsborough’s Blue Boy grown up, an English/French fop in pantaloons and hose and plumed hat, pathetic but not parodic. Maria Allash, so much more physically and emotionally open than Nadezhda Gracheva as Raymonda, was similarly inviting as the street dancer, but her Espada, Timofey Lavrenyuk, didn’t seem motivated to take advantage.

In the West, the second act of Don Quixote finds Basil and Kitri fleeing her father, Lorenzo, who wants her to marry Gamache. They wind up in a Gypsy camp, where Quixote charges the windmills and then has his Dryad Dulcinea dream; in the tavern-set third act, Basil pretends to stab himself so Lorenzo will agree to the lovers’ death-bed marriage, then stages a miracle recovery that leads to a big wedding pas de deux finale. In Russia, the tradition is to have Basil’s ploy lead off the second act. That leaves the Gypsy encampment bereft of the escaping lovers; it also renders Quixote’s dream more perverse than poignant. In the Russian version, Kitri and Basil are, improbably, invited to hold their wedding at the castle of a Duke and Duchess. Sometimes there’s a duel between Quixote and Gamache; here, there’s just a grand pas de deux and an anticlimactic finish.

The Bolshoi’s tavern scene, with a steamy castanet dance by Maria Volodina and Basil’s "suicide," went off well enough, but on Friday, the Gypsy backdrop and the windmills went up almost with the curtain (giving the audience an unadvertised free backstage tour), and the birch-tree forest (symbolizing fidelity) aside, the Bolshoi’s evocation of Quixote’s vision was pedestrian, with Ekaterina Shipulina a buoyant but placid Queen of the Dryads (Barbora Kohoutkova, Sarah Lamb, and Larissa Ponomarenko all had more emotional weight in last fall’s Boston Ballet production) who yielded her Italian fouettes to Kitri. The third act confirmed Alexandrova (whipping turns and steady fouettes) and Belogolovtsev (perpendicular tours a la seconde), less so Antonicheva (attempted double and triple fouettes that threw her off the beat and off her mark) and Klevtsov (more attitude than accomplishment). Loparevich’s Quixote, so promising at the outset, was allowed to drift out of the scenario; by the end, when he and Sancho Panza went off to continue their quest, they had become an afterthought.