ONCE UPON A MATTRESS
Book by Jay Thompson, Marshall Barer, Dean Fuller
Music by Mary Rodgers
Lyrics by Marshall Barer
Starring Sutton Foster, Michael Urie and Ana Gasteyer
Directed by Lear deBessonet
Hudson Theatre
Official Website
Reviewed by David Spencer
Let’s define “core meddling” first. My applied term, and the topic is musicals.
It means monkeying with the original text; more than the odd tweak; distorting. I distinguish this from giving a classic work a new treatment. (And from the original authors re-evaluating and from screen adaptation; all different and more nuanced subjects.)
New treatments are not easily pulled off, because the original material pushes back; ever more so as the distance between the original sensibility and succeeding generations widens; though a re-think from the true core out—building upon the soul of original intent—can lead to some exciting reinvestigation.
I’m semi-semantically dancing away from the word “reinterpretation,” because one can argue that re-evaluation, context-widening, even reimagining, need not move off the foundational center. For example, contemporary verisimilitude of acting style has been threaded into Rodgers and Hammerstein musicals—originally performed in a style that seems, today, quite cornball (you can see it in extended and even complete-show archival footage)—and lose not a whit of authenticity. Several renowned productions have variously, even famously, reduced the production and cast size of Sweeney Todd yet still delivered the Hugh Wheeler/Christopher Bond storytelling flair, plus the thrills, chills and the beauty of Sondheim’s score. If you honor the material, it honors you in return.
But core meddling is not something that most classic book musicals that have survived in the repertoire (most of those post-1945) tend to withstand gladly. This has to do with a combination of things, but the most important are the collaborative/endgame mission of the original creative team—the meshing of disciplines and the coordination of many moving parts toward realizing a single and singular vision—and the social-cultural sensibility of their era. The moment you try to compensate or apologize for or update any of it, you draw attention to the very thing you’d hope to de-emphasize, either via dilution or attitudinal anachronism.
And who knows what the fate of A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum will be, a paean to the traditions of burlesque, combined with the ancient comic tropes in the service of perfectly constructed musical theatre farce—and all because the traditions of sex farce are in the mix; misunderstood, misperceived, branded the “unintentional sexism” of a bygone era (the most charitable of the new-wave appraisals)? (And if you point out that, in its last major Broadway revival of the mid-late ’90s, no less a feminist than Whoopi Goldberg took over the role of Pseudolos, and played it as a woman—not as a pants role–with no-holds-barred commentary of her own, both socially aware and happily complicit…it very often matters not at all.)
And that brings me to Once Upon a Mattress.
Because it allows a pro team with estate permissions to fool around with it as much as they like.
And what makes this possible? By which I really mean: and how can they get away with it?
Simple: Mattress was never assembled that meticulously to begin with.
A comedic take on the Princess and the Pea, it was originally developed as a piece best described as falling into the category of special material (think: extended variety show sketch) at the Tamiment Playhouse, during the brief but fecund period (1960–1965) where it was a lab for current and future Broadway notables. But it kept growing like topsy as its popularity increased, its tone not dissimilar to that of a Jay Ward Fractured Fairy Tale: hip, irreverent, winky—in a certain sense, despite its “classic” source, it invites anachronism. In fact, because of that, the show itself is an anachronism. Though a product of the early ’60s, tossing and turning in the post-1945 wave of book musicals becoming increasingly ambitious and sophisticated, Once Upon a Mattress is a throwback to the mid 1930s, whose musicals are completely unrevivable, save for a handful, like Anything Goes, that have required periodic generational tweaking to rescue the spirit of the piece from the letter of the original, dated scripting.
And subsequently, unlike Forum, which is almost foolproof and seems to rebel against interference, Mattress, the musical, is nowhere near as sensitive as its heroine, Princess Winnifred. As popular culture, socialization, idiomatic language and reference points change, so does the effectiveness of anachronism rooted to an era. It may behoove a show like Once Upon a Mattress to change with it. As evidence, one might even cite the Transport Company’s hopeful off-Broadway revival of 2015 (it doesn’t seem quite that long ago), in which a casting philosophy reflective of what I guess can be called “comic diversity”—for starters, a popular, hangdog-faced character actress as the princess; a famous drag queen as the ruling Queen—wasn’t sufficient enough spin to either reclaim or redefine the territory.
Which brings us to the current Broadway revival.
Its first iteration was an as Encores! concert—and we all know what those are by now; there’s a certain costume and choreographic opulence, but they’re basically staged readings (by now almost always memorized, but readings as per Actors’ Equity presentation/rehearsal guidelines, script-in-hand as symbolic prop), and they’re staged in front of, and to flow around, the very visible, near-front-and-center orchestra on risers.
This is good. The visuals of Fractured Fairy Tales never needed much except spirit and limited animation.
With all original authors having passed on, the revision torch was passed on to Amy Sherman-Palladino, creator of such TV series as The Marvelous Mrs Maisel and Gilmore Girls. Wikipedia says that “Dialogue in [her] work involves heavy use of pop culture references, delivered in a fast repartee, screwball-comedy style.”
This is also good. The original authors were all veterans of special material, which became the province of television, which honed sitcom writers. Allan Burns wrote Fractured Fairy Tales (among other Jay Ward toons) before eventually co-creating The Mary Tyler Moore show. Palladino, though of a younger generation, was weaned on the tradition.
There’s a reason why Once a Upon a Mattress was produced successfully for television three times.
All that remained to have in place was a director who got the sensibility—Lear deBessonet, Encores! AD, had established her fairy tale cred on the revival and transfer of Into the Woods. Said sensibility also including the recognition of funny. Not of what’s funny; to her, that would be already implicit; but of those who can deliver funny because they know what’s funny, and have the confidence to play it for serious stakes. Genuine clowns.
Start with Sutton Foster as Princess Winnifred, the gawky swamp-denizen who becomes more alluring (but no less amusing) as she goes. Ms Foster is among a new(ish) generation of actors who, on aggregate, have an unprecedented versatility—born, I think, of a combination of fanboy-fangirl sponge-memory; equally unprecedented access to electronic preservation of key musical and non-musical performances, legit and bootleg, audio and video and film; youthful mimicry that eventually leads to a versatile, mature toolkit; and informing all that, the innate ability to have absorbed the techniques of stillness, timing and authenticity—which allows them to perform signature roles all over the landscape, not merely pushing the envelope of their age-and-physical type, but seeming to obliterate it. And she steps into her role here with what I’ll call encyclopedic abandon. There’s not a slapstick move that seems contrived nor a line reading that seems inauthentic.
Surround her with others similarly acquitted: the very savvy Michael Urie playing the very naive Prince; Ana Gasteyer as the worst/best possessive diva ever, Brooks Ashmanskas as a wizard whose wizardry is not worth a whiz, Daniel Breaker as—oh, call him “the new Jester,” a composite of the older script’s Jester and Minstrel—as narrator, Greek-ish chorus and nightclub-world’s answer to Edward Everett Horton…and on and on…
Then clock the joy of the concert audience, remove scripts from hands, and transfer.
All this said…am I rave-reviewing the new Once Upon a Mattress?
Yes and no. Mileage will vary.
If you think the original was just fine, dammit, your response will be anything from displeasure to mild amusement.
If you don’t know the original that well (and it’s not one of the essentials, no reason you should), you’ll hover between tickled and joyous.
If you’re like me…you’ll “stand back” a bit, approve of the upgrade, admire the personnel, experience it as pleasant enough; and your personal meter will determine whether that is enough. Because when pea comes to princess…it’s still just special material that found its friendly survival niche.