MATTRESS HOLDS THE BREW THAT IS TRUE
After 25 years, Once Upon a Mattress is back on Broadway at the Hudson Theatre, with a new adaptation by Amy Sherman-Palladino (creator of The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel), directed by Lear deBessonet, and it is a riot. Composer Mary Rodgers, lyricist Marshall Barer, and writers Jay Thompson and Dean Fuller, who created the original version in 1958, would be most delighted to see this truly pleasing, delightful version because it is jam-packed with exceptional performers brought to you by the mind-bogglingly consummate casting of The Telsey Office. Each creative aspect of the play is imaginative and efficient, and Sherman-Palladino’s adaptation — editing the book to focus on its comic strengths — is an excellent and much-needed update. At the end of tonight’s opening, people were literally screaming with joy, and there was a buzz in the electrified air.
Sutton Foster in Once Upon A Mattress
Sutton Foster & Company
With Rodgers having passed in 2014, Barer in 1998, Thompson in 2014 and Fuller in 2017, it seems almost shameful that the creators couldn’t have seen this.
Michael Urie, Sutton Foster & Company
David Patrick Kelly, Michael Urie & Ana Gasteyer
Daniel Breaker & Company
As soon as the lights went down and the curtain came up, we saw the orchestra — and you know how much I appreciate seeing the musicians on stage during any live musical event because I must have mentioned it at least three times in recent reviews (A Little Night Music in Concert was one). Led by Mary-Mitchell Campbell, the upstage band, behind a crenellated pastel wall, carried us posthaste into a musical fairytale land, aided by Justin Townsend‘s graceful light show.
Will Chase & Nikki Renee Daniels
Sutton Foster, Michael Urie, & Company
This light-as-a-down-mattress sendup is based on Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tale “The Princess and the Pea” (1835) about a young woman whose royal ancestry is established by a test of sensitivity. Once Upon a Mattress has a easy plot to follow, and Daniel Breaker as the Jester, adorable and naughty in his cheeky role, informs what is about to happen during the prologue. Queen Aggravain, played by comic genius Ana Gasteyer, keeps putting off her son’s wedding by giving impossible tests to the girls who try to be his bride. The hardest one is the “sensitivity test”: the girl has to lie on top of piled-up mattresses, feel a small pea placed by the Queen between two of the bottom mattresses, and not be able to sleep because of it (proof she is a true princess).
The Company
Amanda LaMotte & Brooks Ashmanskas
Gasteyer, a gifted singer and songwriter, is sublime with impeccable timing; she keeps her voice in a quasi recitative soprano, ready to rise and drop depending on the needed vibe. A genuine queen in her red-and-gold dress and crown, Gasteyer smoothly transitions between being a believable barbed tyrant and the cartoonish, side-splitting version of one. Her son, clumsy Prince Dauntless, is a mess. He would marry anybody at this point, and the court is with him because, by royal decree, nobody can marry until the Prince marries. Michael Urie is lovably hysterical in the role: dressed in light blue garb that makes him look like an overgrown baby, he huffs and puffs, yet does everything mommy orders. Urie plays Dauntless as so inept that he can’t even figure out how to climb stairs, using a comical form of nonverbal communication which conveys his emotional state throughout.
Ana Gasteyer & Company
David Patrick Kelly, Nikki Renée Daniels, & Daniel Breaker
Michael Urie & Company
Ana Gasteyer, Michael Urie, Will Chase, Nikki Renée Daniels
Other people victimized by the Queen are her husband, King Sextimus (David Patrick Kelly), who cannot talk because he is under a spell; the court’s Wizard (Brooks Ashmanskas), an eccentric magician; and Sir Harry (Will Chase), a handsome but dimwitted knight madly in love with Lady Larken (Nikki Renée Daniels). The two need to get married before their secret pregnancy will show, so he needs to find a Princess for Dauntless ASAP. In the archetypal lovers’ roles, Chase and Daniels make the ideal couple; Chase, his vitality infectious, enjoys the part so much that his eyes gleam. Daniels’s gracious acting, paired with her sometimes coy, sometimes potent soprano vocal delivery, is delightful.
Sutton Foster & Company
Sutton Foster
Sutton Foster & Company
Sir Harry sets off for distant lands to find a true princess that could please the Queen and finds that there is only one left, Princess Winnifred the Woebegone from the Swamps, who goes by Fred, a difficult role (because of its simplicity) made famous by that superstar of comedy, Carol Burnett. When Sutton Foster appeared on stage covered in mud and leeches, a snake in her dress and a squirrel in her hair (clever physical comedy and effects by Skylar Fox), the audience roared before she even opened her mouth. Foster plays the unhinged, naive, exuberant, goofy swamp princess with explosive energy and ease, as if she has done it a thousand times before. She takes gawkiness to its zenith, trying to be as gross as possible (I am sure some people will have a problem with it because she takes it to the extreme) but sings superbly like a lyrebird when needed and dances impeccably (Lorin Latarro’s choreography). She and Urie make the perfect weird couple — love and acceptance is the theme.
Ana Gasteyer & Sutton Foster (front)
Daniel Breaker & Company
Scenic designer David Zinn and Townsend complement the tongue-in-cheek mood of deBessonet’s staging; costume designer Andrea Hood and hair & makeup designer J. Jared Janas creat an entire world of color and texture to give all the actors the ideal look. Sound design by Kai Harada, orchestrations by Bruce Coughlin and Mary Mitchell Campbell, and music direction by Annbritt duChateau are faultless, as is the ensemble, Daniel Beeman, Wendi Bergamini, Cicily Daniels, Taylor Marie Daniel, Ben Davis, Oyoyo Joi, Amanda Lamotte, Michael Olaribigbe, Adam Roberts, Jeffrey Schecter, Darius Wright, and Richard Riaz Yoder.
The Company
Daniel Breaker & Brooks Ashmanskas
No wheels have been reinvented but this is the show you want to go see before it must close on November 30, after which it moves to The Ahmanson Theatre in L.A. You will forget all your problems and you will be leaving the Hudson Theatre on a high. I promise.
Ana Gasteyer & Michael Urie
photos by Joan Marcus
Sutton Foster
Once Upon a Mattress
Hudson Theatre, 141 W 44th St
2 hours 15 minutes, including intermission
ends on November 30, 2024
for tickets, visit Once Upon a Mattress
