NEW YORK, NY.- Princess Winnifred and Prince Dauntless are goofy and playful characters. In most musicals, they would provide comic relief from the main storyline. But in “Once Upon a Mattress,” it’s the funny people who rule, both literally and figuratively.
All the more so since Winnifred and Dauntless are played by Sutton Foster and Michael Urie in symbiotic performances that are highly controlled and precise while maintaining the appearance of off-the-cuff abandon.
And with the rest of the cast mostly following suit, it is refreshing to see actors so actively dedicating themselves to entertaining their audience. This kind of unabashed reveling in the joys of strutting your stuff appears to be in demand, too, judging by the recent success of “Oh, Mary!” and “Cats: The Jellicle Ball.”
The family-friendly “Once Upon a Mattress,” which premiered in 1959, is a good fit for the Encores! series — which stages shows that are rarely revived and presented this one in January. Now the production has transferred, with some changes in the supporting cast, to the Hudson Theater on Broadway.
Like many Encores! entries, Mary Rodgers and Marshall Barer’s variation on the Hans Christian Andersen tale “The Princess and the Pea” would probably struggle to crack anybody but a tween’s Top 10 list of the best musicals ever.
Also like many of those entries, “Once Upon a Mattress” turns out to be surprisingly sturdy in the right hands. Rodgers’ music is zingy and Barer’s lyrics often deploy sneakily enjoyable wordplay (“I lack a lass; alas! Alack!”). Just as important, the book by Barer, Jay Thompson and Dean Fuller is engineered to let gifted comic actors run loose — it is no coincidence that Carol Burnett originated the role of Winnifred.
The show is set in a cartoonish medieval-ish kingdom in which nobody can marry until Dauntless does. Unfortunately, his mother, Queen Aggravain (Ana Gasteyer, struggling to find the laughs underneath the steeliness), enjoys staying in power and concocts impossibly hard challenges for the aspiring brides. When the court’s Lady Larken (the returning Nikki Renée Daniels) realizes she is pregnant, she and her boyfriend, Sir Harry (Will Chase, ever reliable playing preening men), suddenly feel pressure to officialize their relationship — stat. (The general nuttiness pauses when this pair croons the lovely duets “In a Little While” and “Yesterday I Loved You.”)
The handsome but rather dim Harry somehow locates a new candidate for Dauntless’ hand: the rough-and-tumble Winnifred, who goes by Fred. For her, Aggravain and her consulting wizard (the fantastically hammy Brooks Ashmanskas, committing the latest in a long history of theatrical scene heists) devise a “sensitivity test” involving a pea and a pile of 20 mattresses.
The production just barrels forward under the direction of Lear deBessonet — who adds to her streak of successfully staging musicals riffing on fairy tales, following the recent Broadway revival of “Into the Woods.” Amy Sherman-Palladino (creator of “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel”) has spruced up the original book with an unobtrusive hand, and Fred benefits from many of the new lines. Foster, who starred in Sherman-Palladino’s series “Bunheads,” fluidly navigates the writer’s rat-a-tat stream of consciousness. She is equally at ease with her big numbers — “Shy,” “The Swamps of Home” and “Happily Ever After” — and throws herself into the near-constant slapstick.
It is especially satisfying to get a gawky, wacky princess who is neither the damsel in peril of olden times nor the plucky, capable Disney girl boss. Fred is a free spirit, enthusiastically picking leeches off her back after swimming the castle’s moat and blissfully impervious to traditional authority or gender roles.
The production does have a few hiccups, like a stiff jester (Daniel Breaker) who reads more like a major-domo, but they are forgotten whenever the two stars are on — especially together, as they are in perfect tonal sync. Urie’s command of both the physical and verbal requirements has gotten more precise since the Encores! run. He combines the two with uncanny skill in “Man to Man Talk,” a half-sung, half-pantomimed duet between Dauntless and his father, King Septimus (David Patrick Kelly).
Even if he did not appear to be very picky when we first met him, Dauntless is understandably charmed by the offbeat newcomer. Fred, in return, is unfazed by the prince’s own idiosyncrasies.
What saves the musical from veering into childishness is its sly attitude toward what lurks behind Dauntless and Fred’s exuberant naivete. Anticipating the joys of being a bride, the princess lists perks like new socks and getting to do gymnastics. Then she muses, “And you get a pal. Someone who thinks you’re funny and calls you a nickname. And you get to go places, and you do everything together, which makes the yearly showers way more fun.”
When it comes to this particular couple, Urie and Foster make you believe in a happy future that may include all kinds of calisthenics.
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‘Once Upon a Mattress’Through Nov. 30 at Hudson Theater, Manhattan; thehudsonbroadway.com. Running time: 2 hours, 15 minutes.
This article originally appeared in
The New York Times.
