Sutton Foster as Princess Winnifred in the Encores! Once Upon a Mattress revival arrives climbing over castle a wall to sing the hilarious “Shy.” Immediately, she also revives an old Broadway tradition: She brings down the house.
She’s done the same house-bringing-down for two decades now but perhaps never previously displaying such expertise at broad comedy — and will, it’s to be expected, explode different comic colors in a matter of days when she bows as Mrs. Lovett in Broadway’s Sweeney Todd.
Foster does her thing not a moment too soon. She doesn’t get to mount that wall in a funny back-swamp get-up (Andrea Hood the costumer) until Once Upon a Mattress has been mildly unfolding for maybe 20 minutes or more –after which it resumes mildly unfolding for the remainder of its two mildly entertaining acts.
[Read Steven Suskin’s ★★★★☆ review here.]
Which brings up the City Center Encores! Series mission. Celebrating 30 years this season, the idea was to dust off what were regarded as Broadway’s “hidden gems.” Lear deBessonet — taking over as artistic director from Jack Viertel last year — has mentioned as much but has been quoted saying the series is geared to “reaching the broadest possible audience of New Yorkers.” The emphasis, it’s implied, is that musicals with reputations make the most commercial sense.
Curiously, though, re-mounting Once Upon a Mattress suggests another Encores! Series purpose, one surely not intended: revealing a favorite tuner to be not especially top-drawer other than as a vehicle for its star and perhaps handing out opportunities for supporting players to have their moments. (This 1959 entry shot Carol Burnett way beyond her prominence on tv’s Garry Moore Show.)
Looked at now, the musicalized version of “The Princess and the Pea,” Hans Christian Anderson’s 1835 fairy tale, has some of the shaggy dog about it. Not so the Anderson original, somewhere between 200 and 300 words and taking less than three minutes to read. Bookwriters Jay Thompson, Dean Fuller, and Marshall Barer pumped it up with, among other filigree, a secondary romance involving a knight who cannot marry his sweetheart until the kingdom’s prince is matched up – this, despite the knight’s sweetie having become pregnant.
That’s hardly the least of the plot festooning. Prominent are an aggravating Queen mother, a king cursed with a silent tongue, a court jester and who-knows-what-all. It might be that deBessonet and creative crew weren’t terribly impressed with the original Once Upon a Mattress script, which received mixed reviews. They apparently weren’t taken with intermittent revises, either, and decided to punch things up a bit further. In came concert adapter Amy Sherman Palladino, hot from five marvelous seasons of The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel duties and before that The Gilmore Girls and the Sutton Foster starrer Bunheads.
To little avail. The story still awkwardly jumps from sequence to sequence with spare logic, jokes landing with pea-sized humor. Plenty registers as forced, Queen Aggravain’s character probably the most forced. Tiresome time is given to Prince Harry and Lady Larken with the result that Winnifred disappears for long stretches. Myriad shenanigans serve as time fillers before Winnifred, nickname Fred, finally gets to bed down over the miniscule pea.
The saving graces of Once Upon a Mattress, just about all musical and often choreographed by Lorin Latarro, do add up. The Rodgers melodies — Mary-Mitchell Campbell vigorously conducting — are charming as Barer slides his lyrics on them. With the lilting “Normandy,” he offers the forever impressive interlinear rhyme, “This time of year, the air, I hear, is rare and clear and warm in Normandy.”
Then there’s the cast, all of whom director deBessonet has encouraged not to restrain themselves. Harriet Harris as the Queen submits her usual pro turn. Michael Urie delivers “Song of Love,” more familiar as “I’m in Love With a Girl Named Fred,” with comic heart. He has the script’s best line, “What if it’s a boy?” Doesn’t sound like a lot in cold print, but in context!
J. Harrison Ghee, a vision in glitter, is the narrating Jester, commandeering the stage throughout. Cheyenne Jackson, not seen enough recently, as Sir Harry and Nikki Renée Daniels as Lady Larken provide the most glorious singing. David Patrick Kelly as non-speaking King Septimus and Francis Jue as a wizard sparkle, too.
It’s Foster who dominates, however. Tossing and turning atop the supposed 20 mattresses, she’s at her physical-comedy best, wringing as much laughter as it appears possible to wring. Accomplished performer that she is, she squeezes abundant comedy pathos and bathos from her other featured ditties, but it’s “Shy” where she mops up.
The slight problem is she belts what feels like an 11 o’clock number at around 8:15, with nothing quite its equal ensuing. The lyric ends with Winnifred claiming — in Barer’s witty play on words — that she’s “one man shy.” In this revival, she’s also one first-class musical shy.
Once Upon a Mattress opened January 24, 2024, at City Center and runs through February 4. Tickets and information: nycitycenter.org
