It’s a wonder that it’s taken this long to cast the irrepressible Sutton Foster in that old high school and community theater staple Once Upon a Mattress, the 1959 chestnut from composer Mary Rodgers and lyricist Marshall Barer that has lingered in the repertory for decades as a witty send-up The Princess and the Pea fairy tale. Foster proves she has the comedic gifts to shine in the role that made Carol Burnett a star, from her expressive facial expressions to her off-kilter line readings (and mid-song vocal inflections). She also boasts once-in-a-generation gifts as a dancer — here eschewing her tap skills to deploy her lithe limbs for physical humor, striking a series of acrobatic poses (and the full splits) atop that 20-mattress bed where her aspiring princess struggles in vain to find a comfortable position.
Foster’s performance in director Lear deBassonet’s delightful revival, which opened Monday on Broadway following a two-week run earlier this year at the Encores! series at New York City Center, is a triumph of clever casting — and she’s matched by gifted co-stars who complement their leading lady with infectious onstage enthusiasm. That begins with Michael Urie, who proves to be a convincingly expressive man-child as the foot-stompingly immature Prince Dauntless. Though both stars are comfortably in their 40s, they sparkle with a kind of middle-school first-crush chemistry, full of sidelong glances and shoulder punches, that is both charming and apt for the material.
Foster’s Princess Winnifred the Woebegone, an unrefined royal from the nearby swamp, has arrived in a medieval kingdom whose ruling monarch (played by SNL alum Ana Gasteyer with broad panto villain energy) has thwarted her son, Urie’s Prince Dauntless, from marrying and thus ending her rule. (There’s a quasi-feminist angle to her motives here, one that gets a boost from Amy Sherman-Palladino’s updated adaptation of the original book by Barer, Jay Thompson, and Dean Fuller.) After rejecting 12 potential princesses on a series of ever-more-outrageous pretexts, Gasteyer’s Queen Aggravain seems especially alarmed by the arrival of Winnifred, a guileless outsider who immediately captures Dauntless’s eye, and threatens both Aggravain’s rule and the kingdom-wide moratorium on marriage.
There are others rooting for the couple, too. Maid-in-waiting to-be Lady Larken (the crystal-voiced Nikki Renée Daniels) has gotten pregnant by her dimwitted knight beau Sir Harry (Will Chase) and needs Dauntless to wed to get hitched herself and preserve her honor. Also conspiring to end the queen’s schemes are the mute king (David Patrick Kelly, going full panto) and the smooth narrator/court jester (Daniel Breaker, boasting a fine baritone and even finer duds, designed by costumer Andrea Hood).
There are some lulls here, particularly in the first act — one wishes that deBassonet and Sherman-Palladino (who eliminated the original Minstrel character and combined his lines and songs with the Jester’s) had been even more ruthless in eliminating some of the redundancies of the original script. We all grew up on fairy tales, and don’t need all the reminders of where the plot is headed.
The songs, which display Barer’s flair for internal rhymes and worldplay, are an absolute delight — and Winnifred’s ironically brash opening number, “Shy,” recalls Foster’s similarly paradoxical showstopper from The Drowsy Chaperone, “Show Off,” where she insisted she didn’t want to show off in increasingly show-offy ways. (Lorin Latarro’s choreography has a swagger without ever going over the top.)
David Zinn’s colorful set design mimics the bare-bones set-up of the Encores! production, complete with simple black drops that appear for multiple scenes staged downstage. But there’s a kind of lessness here that may seem disappointing — from the smaller ensemble (squeezed from 16 at New York City Center to 12) to the even more slimmed-down orchestra (which has been pared back from 26 members to a more economical 16). They still sound good under Mary Mitchell-Campbell’s baton, but the overall effect is less lush.
Still, this production proves just how sturdy an entertainment Once Upon a Mattress remains — many of the biggest laughs are now 65 years old, and show no need for retirement. This is just good, old-fashioned fun.
ONCE UPON A MATTRESS
Hudson Theatre, Broadway
Running time: 2 hours, 15 minutes (1 intermission)
Tickets on sale through Nov. 30
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