Sutton Foster, trying her hand at goofy physical comedy and affecting a rapid-fire comic patter reminiscent of early Barbra Streisand, is an undeniable draw in the Encores! series revival of this oft-produced musical comedy, backed by a starry cast of some of New York’s most reliable stage actors. This includes two of the most consistently hilarious, Michael Urie as a hapless prince and Harriet Harris as his bullying mother the Queen, whose scenes together are priceless.
Foster certainly holds her own as Princess Winnifred the Woebegone, the role that made Carol Burnett a star when the show debuted on Broadway in 1959, subsequently portrayed by Sarah Jessica Parker and Jackie Hoffman in New York revivals. The Princess Winnifreds are likely also eliciting appreciative guffaws right now in current production at Conroe High School in Texas, Dunlap High School in Illinois, and the Frances Kelsey Secondary School in Mill Bay, British Columbia.
“Once Upon A Mattress” is clearly not an obscure musical. Still, I rushed to see the Encores concert version, playing at New York City Center through February 4. It is the first production of the show in New York since the 2022 posthumous publication of composer Mary Rodgers’ memoir “Shy,” – the title named after her most memorable song in this, her first musical.
“Once Upon A Mattress,” she says in the memoir (co-written with Jesse Green), is a “Borscht Belt retelling of Hans Christian Andersen’s fairly tale ‘The Princess and the Pea,’ which tells the story of “a big, awkward, loudmouth princess, born to royalty but nevertheless a misfit…she has to outwit a vain and icy queen to get what she wants and live happily ever after.
“Story of my life, if only I’d realized it,” she adds, the start of a crucial paragraph:
“At the time, writing Mattress, I was in one of my periodic happily ever afters, which, spoiler alert, don’t last long. I was twenty-seven, freshly divorced, finally doing what I wanted the way I wanted, even if I was always terrified of failing. But one thing my life had shown me by then was that failing wasn’t so bad. In any case, it was inevitable, especially when your father was a god and your mother, well, a vain and icy queen.”
Mary Rodgers (1931-2014) was the daughter of Richard Rodgers, and if her first musical contains no eternal earworms like “Oklahoma!” or “Some Enchanted Evening,” the tuneful score is an argument that talent is inherited. As we learn in her memoir, Rodgers was a good friend of Stephen Sondheim; I’ve wondered whether “Once Upon A Mattress” at all helped to inspire Sondheim’s much later “Into The Woods.”
If the older fairy tale adaptation hasn’t aged as well, it’s worth noting that Rodgers wrote neither the libretto nor the lyrics (just the music) and the Encores production has gotten a noticeable makeover, with a credit for “concert adaptation” by Amy Sherman-Palladino, creator of the TV series Gilmore Girls, Bunheads (which starred Foster) and The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel.
J Harrison Ghee introduces the tale as the Jester (taking over the role as well of the Minstrel, which was a separate character in previous productions.) Here he is in rehearsal singing the Prologue: Many Moons Ago:
As you’ve just heard, Prince Dauntless (Michael Urie) wants to marry and take over the rule of the kingdom, but his mother, with the fitting name of Queen Aggravain (Harriet Harris)m doesn’t want to give up her power. So she devises royalty tests for prospective princesses that are impossible to pass.
Nobody else in the kingdom can marry until Dauntless does, which causes a dilemma for Sir Harry (Cheyenne Jackson) and Lady Larkin (Nikki Renee Daniels) because Larkin discovers she’s pregnant.
When the lady tells the knight she’s with child, they have an exchange (courtesy of Sherman-Palladino):
Sir Harry: But I thought if you thought of holy things you couldn’t get pregnant.
Lady Larkin: That’s not true.
Sir Harry: And it was a Thursday. You can’t get pregnant on a Thursday
Lady Larkin: God you’re….handsome.
This secondary couple get two lovely duets, “In A Little While” and “Yesterday I Loved You.”
Here they are singing the first one in rehearsal:
Sir Harry travels to the swampland in the North to find a new princess, and brings back the very un-princess-like Princess Winnifred, whom we first see scrambling over the castle wall, after swimming the moat.
Foster makes a splash with a series ofwater-related comic bits I won’t spoil – the peak of the slapstick in the show, matched only by her elaborate shows of discomfort trying to sleep on the pile of mattresses that rest atop a pea.
In its thirtieth anniversary season, Encores! keeps to the tradition it established from the get-go of putting the music center stage, literally: The 26-piece (including seven violinists, two trumpeters, a harpist) is always in full view, pushing performers downstage.
But, unlike the early concerts in the series, it would be hard to argue that the acting and dancing play second (or eighth) fiddle. None of the lead actors read from the scripts on music stands anymore; they are fully costumed, they and the ensemble are fully choreographed. Encores no longer sees its primary mission as offering a second listen to long-dormant musicals with great scores and poor books. One now suspects that the producers are always hoping for a Broadway transfer, such as happened, most spectacularly, with “Chicago.” Even officially, as its page on the City Center website puts it, “This series of concert stagings revisits the archives of American musical theater…spotlighting the vocal talents of star-studded ensembles.” It’s hard to complain when the vocal talent is so abundant, as in “Once Upon A Mattress,” and it’s matched by so much comic talent.
Encores! Once Upon a Mattress
New York City Center through February 8
Running time: 2 hours, 20 minutes including one intermission
Tickets: $45 – $235
Music by Mary Rodgers
Lyrics by Marshall Barer
Book by Jay Thompson, Dean Fuller & Marshall Barer
Concert Adaptation by Amy Sherman-Palladino
Directed by Lear deBessonet
Scenic designer David Zinn, costume designer Andrea Hood, lighting designer Amith Chandrashaker, sound designer Kai Harada, choreographer Lorin Latarro, music director Mary-Mitchell Campbell
Cast: Sutton Foster as Princess Winnifred, Michael Urie as Prince Dauntless, Nikki Renée Daniels as Lady Larken, J. Harrison Ghee as Jester, Harriet Harris as Queen Aggravain, Cheyenne Jackson as Sir Harry, Francis Jue as Wizard, David Patrick Kelly as King Sextimus the Silent).
