The Brothers Grimm was not a sobriquet, but it could have been. Their fairy tales, along with Andersen’s, were meant to instruct, but they also cast a decidedly sinister shadow. Robert Browning’s poem “The Pied Piper of Hamelin,” likewise, tells the story of a strange musician in a colorful get-up who uses his talent to rid a medieval village of bubonic rats: for a fee. The mayor stiffs him, and as a punishment he lulls the village children through a portal in the mountainside, gone forever.

James Kudelka’s version of the tale, “The Contract (The Pied Piper),” opened at BAM on Tuesday, in a performance by the National Ballet of Canada. Mr. Kudelka replaces the medieval village with a strict religious order. Instead of an infestation of mice, the group is struck by a peculiar dementia, which expresses itself in spasmodic gestures. With this set-up Mr. Kudelka attempts to explore the grown-up side of Browning’s quaint rhyming stanzas in more arching terms: moral hypocrisy. But as the parentheses in the title suggests, his version relies too heavily on the original for the changed scenery to be effective.

The entire narrative of “The Pied Piper” is re-enacted in the form of a school play during the first 15 minutes of the work. As the main curtain lifts, we see another curtain belonging to a small stage in the mise-en-scene of a gymnasium. With the house lights still on, children run amok with rat costumes on. We are meant to appreciate the amateur affair for what it is: record hiss, missed cues, a cardboard river. The piper is dressed in a makeshift coat patterned with autumn leaves.

The audience on stage wears matching black cassocks and sexless skirts. Before taking their seats, they circle around their young in a joyless, cultic version of “Giselle’s” maypole dance. The ascetic quality of the congregation is captured in the statuesque port de bras of outspread palms. This gesture, repeated throughout, becomes a physical theme in which members of the congregation identify each other and express loyalty.

When a young man, played by NBC’s star Guillaume Cote, named Will returns to town, he brings with him some worldly experience. His bare shoulders alarm the elders and enchant the ladies. As he leaps and turns, he elicits awe from the children. Subversively, he curves his arms.

His arrival prompts a mysterious ailment that takes control of the entire youth. Most likely moral in nature, the sickness forces them to abandon the movement orthodoxies of the group. Then a stranger arrives.

Eva, a faith healer in beige played by Martine Lamy, announces her presence in lithe graceful strides. Wary at first, the congregation crowns her with huddled palms. Their shadows loom importantly on the background. In the healing ritual, she stands on top of a ramp while those afflicted with the disease crawl painfully upright.

Kevin Lamotte’s lighting design casts Eva in a warm sympathetic glow, while the others are scrutinized under the harsh florescent lights of the gymnasium. Later that evening, as Eva dances an impassioned solo, Will interrupts. They seem to recognize each other as kindred spirits from the outside world. She instructs him how to hold her. He collapses on his knees.

The literalness of the choreography intrudes on their duet when Will stumbles out of his trousers. Eva is astride him as the light flashes on and the two are caught red-handed by an elder. The work closes with Eva being ousted from the community. Appearing suddenly in an adult copy of the child piper’s coat of autumn leaves, she leaves the community with the children following behind.

Mr. Kudelka has earned a reputation for invigorating classical story ballets (“The Firebird,” “Cinderella,” “Sleeping Beauty”) with a wider range of expressive movement. In this work, however, he fails to wipe away the whiteface of mime. The rigid torso and upturned palms among the congregants reduces much of their movement to a “Riverdance” jig. They have the expressive power of a bell choir.

In addition, his choice to conflate the two stories is baffling. His play-within-a-play burlesques his own effort in the main action to present a compelling portrait of Eva. The self-consciousness of the school play extends to the rest of the work. The choreography ranges from the self-conscious to just plain hokey. Even Will’s movements can seem vaguely sarcastic.

Michael Torke’s original score doesn’t always help when it plays the Copelandesque open fifths, recalling the wideopen vistas of DeMille’s “Rodeo” and Graham’s “Appalachian Spring,” and not high-school theatrics. Hearing the music live was a pleasure, however, and performed vigorously by the National Ballet Touring Orchestra along with members of the Brooklyn Philharmonic.

Browning’s “The Pied Piper” is about keeping your promise; but much is left purposefully unclear. For example, is what happens only horrible from the point of view of adults, who distrust, even fear, the transformative power of art? (The children seemed rather happy.) It is this side of the story Mr. Kudelka seeks to dramatize in his stylized updating. But his predictable and unimaginative movements dampen the suggestive power of the original with overly tidy metaphors as dogmatic in their literalness as the congregants he seeks to criticize.

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