Shtick has the last word in James Kudelka’s “Cinderella,” which returned to American Ballet Theatre Monday night as the final offering of the company’s two-month season at the Metropolitan Opera House. Period touches — the period being the years between the two world wars — are what distinguish Mr. Kudelka’s production, which was created for the National Ballet of Canada in 2004 and was first performed by ABT last year.

At the very end of Act III , a newspaper photographer who has been lingering since the Act II ballroom scene intrudes on a tender moment between Cinderella and the Prince, who tells the photographer to get lost.

Conceptually, the ballet is always serviceable, and sometimes pleasant. There is much humor, but not a lot of wit. Mr. Kudelka has borrowed liberally from both Nureyev’s “Cinderella” for the Paris Opera Ballet, which was set in 1930s Hollywood, and Maguy Marin’s for the Lyon National Opera Ballet, from which Mr. Kudelka has taken the puppetlike spirits that visit Cinderella in her kitchen.

But there is something of a vacuum at the heart of this “Cinderella,” which lies in the evocation of Cinderella herself. Act I, in which the music gives a choreographer a real opportunity to establish Cinderella’s character and the dominant tone in which she will be identified, here fails to do so. One moment she’s a maladroit Kewpie doll; later she is a victim as her two Stepsisters trip her in tandem. Mr. Kudelka’s Cinderella emerges by process of elimination: She is not very poignant, not very much of a dreamer, not a feisty combatant against her fate. But eventually, this process of elimination stalls: While we know who she isn’t, we don’t ever really discover who she is.

David Boechler’s handsome scenery and costumes are the most distinctive element in this production. The first two acts are framed by receding arches of overlapping art deco prints. Act I is in the large and luxe kitchen, furnished in blond woods, in which Cinderella toils. Act II is strung with Chinese lanterns and seems like a North Shore Long Island estate of the time.

ABT’s opening night Cinderella was Julie Kent. She was always competent, but her performance was a little on the dim side. During Act I, she sometimes seemed as though she wished she could be knocking about as one of her two Stepsisters.

Ms. Kent wasn’t completely in her zone while slithering around the Prince in the ballroom scene, full of whirling lifts and serpentine coils, but she negotiated it skillfully, with devoted assistance from Marcelo Gomes, her Prince. In their last act adagio, Ms. Kent’s performance opened up beautifully and she concluded it at its peak. And Mr. Gomes was a dapper and sympathetic Prince.

When all is said and done, “Cinderella” justifies itself by the myriad supporting roles it offers the ranks of the company. Some of the best dancing Monday night came from the Fairies who materialize in Act I, summoned by Cinderella’s Godmother, here acted by Susan Jones as a heartier figure than the study in faded gentility that Georgina Parkinson offered last year.

Named for the seasons in the original productions of Prokofiev’s score, the Fairies are herere named for botanical elements (the Act III apotheosis takes place in Cinderella’s magic garden over which they preside). Misty Copeland as Blossom, Maria Riccetto as Petal, Melissa Thomas as Moss, and Zhong-Jing Fang as Twig each demonstrated a feeling for classicism as well as Mr. Kudelka’s eccentricities. Except for Ms. Riccetto, each of these women is in the corps de ballet, which means that ABT has almost more talent than it knows what to do with.

The two Stepsisters were Carmen Corella as the tall, self-styled glamour-puss, and Marian Butler as the short and more debilitated one. Each dancer clowned and camped expertly, as did Craig Salstein and Isaac Stappas as their Hired Escorts. Tobin Eason was an insinuative Jeweler, and Vitaly Krauchenka was a foppish Dancing Instructor; each was just embellished enough. The Prince’s retinue — Matthew Golding, Jared Matthews, Sascha Radetsky, and Gennadi Saveliev — were high flying boon companions. Martine Van Hamel as Cinderella’s perpetually high Stepmother was also amusing, stumbling around in the manner of Carol Burnett as Norma Desmond.

Until July 7 (Lincoln Center, 212-721-6500).