New York City Ballet’s “Sleeping Beauty,” revived on Wednesday night, often seems closer to Broadway’s “Wicked” than to the ballet Marius Petipa devised in 1890. The costumes and scenery of “The Sleeping Beauty” were designed by Broadway veterans: Patricia Zipprodt’s costumes have a childlike view of pageantry, and David Mitchell’s scenery is of the single-important-element variety that has characterized Broadway design since World War II. The stage is skeletally populated with spearcarriers and court retinue, and the responses of characters onstage are realistic rather than poetic. The action is compressed: There is only one intermission — which comes about two-thirds way through the stage action, and brevity is achieved by making major and sometimes awkward cuts in the score.

NYCB’s “Sleeping Beauty” was choreographed in 1991 by Peter Martins, whose intention in adding more show business to the ballet may have been to make it more accessible. But Mr. Martins achieves accessibility by sacrificing nobility. In 19thcentury classical ballets, nobles are meant to be noble in every sense of the word. Classical ballet’s emphasis on “nobility” beyond the social pecking order is nowhere more prevalent than in “Sleeping Beauty,” in which the Lilac Fairy and her sister fairies use gestures to indicate that they are on a higher level spiritual nobility than the aristocrats onstage.

But philosophical detachment and refinement don’t mesh with hustle and bustle, and this is where Mr. Martins’s “Sleeping Beauty” lacks. On Wednesday night, the problem didn’t lie — as it sometimes does — in NYCB’s orchestra pit, where the music is often played too fast. The orchestra under Maurice Kaplow did not play well, but at least it did not rush most of the tempos. But the action onstage is so hasty that people seem to rush around as if worried they’ll be late, pursuing the action rather than letting it come to them.

On Wednesday night, many of the performances demonstrated an awareness of the essential elements of “Sleeping Beauty.” Those who play Princess Aurora dazzle either by demonstrating the teenager’s coltish exuberance as expressed in irrepressible sallies into space and air, or by imbuing their movement and responses with charm and elegance. Wendy Whelan’s Aurora performance fell into the latter category. Her entrance was tepid, in part because Mr. Martins’s choreography is much more grounded than the exploding grand jetés and pas de chats of most productions. But as the performance progressed, it was evident Ms. Whelan was conserving herself whenever she had do anything in the air. And she was generally stronger in supported passages — her développés were gorgeous —than in her solo work, although her balances in the Rose Adagio were fine. There were also myriad wellobserved details of characterization and style throughout her performance. Without simpering, Ms. Whelan simulated the radiance of unblemished youth and innocence.

The Christening Fairies, Amanda Hankes, Ana Sophia Scheller, Rebecca Krohn, Alina Dronova, and Ellen Bar, also demonstrated an understanding of how their solos are intended to unfold. The dancers handled the episode much better than when NYCB last performed “Beauty” in 2004, when the fairies and their cavaliers came out grinning at the audience.

Though she is an excellent ballerina, Jennie Somogyi was somewhat at a loss as the Lilac Fairy. Ms. Somogyi isn’t very tall and doesn’t have exceptionally long arms, which makes it more difficult for her to declaim her commands with a coming-from-up-high aplomb. It doesn’t help that she is also shorter than Ms. Whelan, over whose destiny she is meant to preside.

But Ms. Somogyi did nearly everything possible to ameliorate her peculiar casting, by making her arms lyrically benevolent, sometimes keeping her elbows raised in a manner to suggest that she was floating on a cushion of air, and walking with delicacy to suggest the same thing. She danced her Prologue solo very well, although at the cost of some brusqueness in the arms.

Toward the end of the Christening scene, former NYCB ballerina Merrill Ashley churned out furiously as the wicked Carabosse, supplying a welcome and riveting note of authority. She was a temptest out of opera-seria: proud, implacable, and yes, noble in the sense of formidably regal.

Nikolaj Hübbe should have been perfect for the role of Prince Désiré, given that he was trained in Demark within a storied history of pantomime and acting. But it may be for that reason that he seemed discomfited Wednesday night, for he is given almost no time within the ballet to create a character. With most of the hunting scene cut in NYCB’s production, he must go almost immediately from his entrance to the episodes of discontented introspection that precede the visit of the Lilac Fairy.

Some of the best dancing came in the final scene, the wedding celebration. Teresa Reichlin, Tiler Peck, Abi Stafford and Stephen Hanna, who was much less lax than he has sometimes been in the past, danced the Jewels pas de quatre. And in the grand pas de deux, Ms. Whelan achieved a new echelon of poise and maturity that completed the arc she had begun two acts earlier. Here, we saw not simply NYCB’s “Sleeping Beauty,” but rather the ballet itself.

Until January 14 (Lincoln Center, 212-721-6500).