A princess, as we are told in the high-spirited revival of ”Once Upon a Mattress,” which opened last week at New York City Center staring Sutton Foster as part of its Encores program, should be ”a delicate thing, delicate and dainty as a dragonfly’s wing.”
Sutton Foster, as is the comedienne who originated the role, Carol Burnett, is many things, but delicate she is not.
Foster plays the medieval hillbilly swamp tomboy princess of Farfelot who was brought by Sir Harry (Cheyenne Jackson), a knight in shining armor with equally shining spurs on his boots, to a fictional medieval kingdom in 15th century Europe ruled by a scheming Queen Aggravain (a very regal Harriet Harris), for whom no princess is good enough for her son, Prince Dauntless (Michael Urie), and her mute husband, King Sextimus (a rather subdued David Patrick Kelly).
The very regal Harriet Harris as Queen Aggravain and the equally subdued David Patrick Kelly as King Sextimus
When we first see Foster on stage, she is a dripping vision in algae, there is an eel down her dress and an angry beaver tangled in her bun. And that doesn’t even account for the leeches.
“Once Upon a Mattress,” the goofy musical that gave Mary Rodgers a Tony Award and Broadway its most itinerant show in history, always meant one thing to me: Carol Burnett and this concert version, adapted by Amy Sherman-Palladino under the direction of Lear deBessonet, with is worthy of that name.
This show has it all, which accounts for its great popularity in licensing requests, and it was clearly ahead of its time in casual gender flipping and questionable dalliances.
‘Mattress’ marked the Broadway debut of the comedienne, who became known as a force of nature overnight and my familiarity with the show was solely due to productions with her in them. While I wasn’t around in 1959, I did see repeats of the 1964 and 1972 television production starring Burnett in her signature role as Princess Winifred the Woebegone, and I also saw the 2005 movie , in which she starred as Queen Aggravain.
A photograph of Carol Burnett, who originated the role of Princess Winifred the Woebegone, loomed large at the theater.
There, however, is one thing that Burnett did in her role as the princess that she would prefer Foster not do: In acting out the story of the princess who could not sleep atop a pile of 20 mattresses because of a tiny pea below one of the ones on the bottom, Burnett did what the character could not do, at least in one performance, namely fall asleep on the pile of mattresses. She confssed this when appearing on the daytime TV show “Live with Kelly and Ryan.”
Explaining she was also appearing regularly on “The Gary Moore Show” at the time, she said that she “didn’t have a day off because we did two shows on Sunday and on Monday I would start on Garry’s show all over again.”
“I fell asleep onstage,” she confessed. “Maybe I was out for about ten or 15 seconds and the stage manager in the wings was saying, ‘Carol, Carol wake up!’ The audience – they didn’t know. So, then they did gave me a day off.”
Sutton Foster (c.) at her curtain call, with Harriet Harris (l.) and Cheyenne Jackson as Sir Harry (r.)
The show opened o n May 11, 1959 at the off-Broadway Phoenix Theatre, where it had 216 performances, and then transferred to Broadway for 244 performances, starting at the Alvin Theatre (today, the Neil Simon Theater), and then moving sequentially to the Winter Garden Theatre, the Cort Theatre (now the James Earl Jones Theater), and finally the St. James Theatre (originally Erlanger’s Theatre). It was for this reason that Mary Rodgers, whose father was Richard Rodgers and who also wrote the novel Freaky Friday, gave the show the joke subtitle of “the most moving on Broadway.”
The Jester (Bud Weber took over the role as of February 2) served as the narrator and kept things moving while occasionally plotting with the Wizard (Francis Jue), who earned his wizard wings by virtue of a career in show biz or playing Dolmetscher between the Queen and Lady Larken (Nikki Renée Daniels).
Meanwhile Prince Dauntless may not live up to his name but he is clever enough to fall head over heels in love complete with puppy-dog eyes with a princess named Fred.
The Encores revival brought back visions of the original, under the legendary George Abbot’s direction, which became the little-show-that-could of the pivotal late 1950s. The witty and playful book, based on the Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale The Princess and the Pea, by Marshall Barer (who was also the show’s lyricist), Jay Thompson, and Dean Fuller, concerns series of tests devised for petitioning princesses that ultimately becomes a “sensitivity test” whereby the queen places a pea under Fred’s mattress to determine her bonafides as “any real princess would have been unable to sleep with a pea under twenty mattresses.”
The ensemble takes its curtain call.
The trademark no-frills Encores set design by David Zinn is colorful and gives off just the right vibe for the early 1500s and the medieval frocks, cloaks, and tunics from the imagination of Andrea Hood were brilliant. Special mention should go to J. Jared Janas for wig design as not everyone is asked to design a beaver-compatible hairpiece for a Broadway show.
Finally, while the opinion of this reviewer may not carry much weight, I gladly yield to someone who has 23 Primetime Emmy nominations with 6 wins; 18 Golden Globe nominations with 7 wins; 3 Tony Awards; and 2 Peabody Awards: Carol Burnett herself.
“You are the perfect Fred,” the actress and comedienne was overheard saying to Sutton Foster on a phone call shared on social media. No wonder Foster let out Burnett’s trademark Tarzan yell shortly after she emerged from the moat.
New York City Centers’ Encores productions are concert stagings that harken back at some of the most interesting and compelling work in American musical theater.
These incredible productions are produced, due to the limited run, with equally limited rehearsal schedules, It’s worth mentioning that this is Encores 30th year and two more musicals remain, “Jelly’s Last Jam” in late February and “Titanic” in June.
THE DETAILS
Once Upon a Mattress
Limited engagement through February 3 , 2024
New York City Center
131 W 55th Street
New York, N.Y. 10019
Running time : 2 hours 20 minutes
www.nycitycenter.org
(Photos: Accura Media Group)
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