Once Upon a Mattress – Hey Nonny, Nonny, Nonny,No

The “pea musical,” as its authors deemed it, was a playful interpretation of Hans Christian Andersen’s
The Princess and the Pea created over three weeks the summer of 1958. Its writers, at talent incubator Tamiment adult summer camp, included Mary Rodgers (music), Marshall Barer (book/lyrics), Jay Thompson and Dean Fuller (book). Roles were tailored to available talent. Milt Kamen, for example, “couldn’t sing or memorize lines. He claimed, though, to be an excellent mime, so Marshall and Jay created the mute king as counterpoint to Aggravain.” (Mary Rodgers)

At the end of the season, the collaborators went home without expectations. Designers (and fans) Jean and Bill Eckart pursued turning the piece into a full length musical. They brought it to director George Abbott. In May 1959 Once Upon a Mattress opened first off then on Broadway garnering several Tony nominations; making an overnight star of Carol Burnett, who would later appear in two television versions. (The origin story is entertainingly chronicled in Rodgers book with Jesse Green, Shy.)

Daniel Breaker (Jester), Brooks Ashmanskas (Wizard)

Reviews were mixed, but after moderate reservations, Brooks Atkinson of The New York Times wrote
“The mood is gaily naïve, the tempo is light, and the total impression is beguiling.” Composer Mary Rodgers summed up: “It’s just a very true piece. It was always directed that way. George (Abbott) in his way, felt that, too. He said, ‘If you play it for comedy, it’ll never work. If you play it for real, it will.’”

What appears at the Hudson Theatre, transferred from City Center’s Encore series, has, alas a lack, few of the qualities praised by Atkinson or Abbot’s vision. About as light as a doorstop, it telegraphs jokes and exhaustively repeats slapstick physical humor. Adapter Amy Sherman-Palladino contemporizes the wry fairy tale, garroting enchantment with the focus -though clearly not intention – of a child pulling wings off fireflies.

One might be suspicious from the start when multi-talented Daniel Breaker as the narrating Jester (the original minstrel is gone) can’t refrain from adding camp gestures to the lilting “Many Moons Ago.”
“I happen to know the story because I was there, man!” he colloquializes.

David Patrick Kelly (King), Michael Urie (Prince Dauntless), Ana Gasteyer (Queen Aggravain)

Queen Aggravain (Ana Gasteyer – Who kidnapped the comedienne and replaced her with this humorless performer?) is testing princesses, the winner to marry hapless Prince Dauntless (Michael Urie, able to showcase familiar brio, though sometimes straining against broad direction.) Each Royal is set an impossible question/task concocted by the queen with her in-house Wizard (Brooks Ashmanskas, visibly bored, playing the same characteristics for which he’s always cast). Aggravain has no intention of giving up the throne.

That three Princesses hold their headshots (a la Chorus Line) and one reject protests “I can tap!” is clever, questions put to them are not. “You asked a princess to do long division and it hasn’t been invented yet,” Dauntless whines in one of endless self-conscious updates. “Drink your cocoa, darling,” the queen replies.

Will Chase (Sir Harry) and Nikki Renee Daniels (Lady Larken)

The kingdom is in their Prince’s corner. No one may marry until Dauntless weds. This is an encroaching problem for secretly pregnant Lady Larken (Nikki Renee Daniels) and her handsome, dunderheaded beau Sir Harry (Will Chase). Both actors are stand-outs. Chemistry, vocals; her sincerity, and his casual misogyny work wonderfully. Larken suggests they flee the kingdom. “Why should we both suffer all our lives because you had a moment of weakness,” he responds.

Sutton Foster (Princess Winnifred) and the Company

Sir Harry rides off to look for an eligible Royal. He returns with Princess Winnifred the Woebegone
(Sutton Foster), who swims the moat to save time. From the moment the gyrating Energizer Bunny
flings herself onto the parapet, she chews scenery as if starving; her face almost never at natural rest
from mugging. “If the physical thing you’re doing is funny, you don’t have to act funny to do it.”
(Gene Wilder)

An eel, leeches, a beaver, and a (fake) ukulele are pulled from the enormous, birds’ nest wig and soaking wet clothes. Here’s where the song “Shy” is supposed to erupt. Atkinson wrote that Burnett “…discharges Miss Rodgers music as though she were firing a field mortar.” No such luck here. Foster is loud, but melodic, neither boisterous nor funny. She galumphs around the stage obviously self aware. We believe neither ingenuousness nor unbridled excitement. Staging never connects with the plea of lyrics.

Winnifred’s idea of marriage is getting new socks, playing board games, and an endless supply of soap – which she oddly persists in biting into and spitting out. When Dauntless asks, his mother tells him to expect a rash. This from the woman responsible for The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel?

Sutton Foster (Princess Winnifred)

Aggravain and the Wizard will soothe and drug Winnifred, then bed her on “twenty downy mattresses” beneath which a pea is hidden. It’s a test of sensitivity. The word should curdle in Aggravain’s mouth. It does not. The Queen is too busy getting a foot massage and choosing nail polish. In order to tire the aspirant, a court ball features the increasingly sped up Spanish Panic (dance) as demonstrated by
Sir Harold from Greenpoint. (Choreographer Lorin Latarro could make this more crisp.)

Foster milks every bit of physical comedy long after it’s reaped the reward of laughter. Stuffing her mouth with grapes as if afraid she’ll be caught (why?), then spitting the mash into a vase, tossing its flowers into the audience, looks uncomfortable and gross evoking not even giggles. The actress spends a good ten plus minutes readjusting herself on the top mattress. Overkill. A frequent leading lady, Sutton Foster has a good voice, is game and limber, but here almost never sympathetic, warm, or funny.

Daniel Breaker (Jester) and the Company

Meanwhile, the timid, cursed King (David Patrick Kelly), unable to speak until the mouse devours the hawk, must explain “the birds and bees” to innocent Dauntless – in mime. The usually charming parenthesis is twice handicapped: first, because the bearded, mustachioed actor hides his face. Jack Gilford’s expressions (on television) were priceless. And second, because mime – throughout the show – is too unspecific. Also eschewing tenderness and intimacy is “Very Soft Shoes,” an enchanting, solo recollection here turned into a production number. Finesse has been replaced by ersatz Las Vegas sensibility. Last seen in the short lived revival of Spamalot, this seems an unfortunate trend.

Set Designer David Zinn’s banners create atmosphere until a group of them appears printed with graphics of a yellow taxi, a hot dog, donuts, and pretzels. A doll’s house castle, much like the diminutive set pieces designed for Into the Woods, is grand as are the mattresses. Use of hanging colored lights, appears tacky. Nor do we need glitzy proscenium bulbs.

Michael Urie (Prince Dauntless), Sutton Foster (Princess Winnifred) and the Company

Costumes by Andrea Hood favor the men. Aggravain’s dress is fine, though a lost opportunity for ostentation; Larken’s well styled gown looks cheap. Virtually all of Winnifred’s attire is unflattering. The clingy, yellow dress she’s given after specifically requesting magenta might be found in a bin at Goodwill. Cartoonish contemporary pajamas and robe, though fun, seem out of place. We never see Winnifred looking royal or even kempt.  

J. Jared Janas’s wigs for the princess include a huge bedraggled hair pile when she first arrives, then, cleaned up and apparently shorn, a gamine cut which remains bedhead-looking throughout the rest of the show. Is there a dearth of combs in the castle. Does she not care what she looks like? Is she not dressed and attended? Likely directorial, it defies logic.

Director Lear deBessonet (and accomplice/adapter Amy Sherman-Palladino) have taken a modest, jewel box musical, saddled it with everyday references (which also disenchanted The Fantasticks) and weighed down charm with ba-dump-dump jokes and repetitive physical sight gags. This leaves an obvious amalgam of second tier Vaudeville. There are nifty moments, but don’t go expecting irony or froth.

The original Once Upon a Mattress remains one of the most produced musicals in the country.

Photos by Joan Marcus

Once Upon a Mattress
Book – Jay Thompson/Marshall Barer/Dean Fuller
Music – Mary Rodgers; Lyrics – Marshall Barer
Adapted by Amy Sherman-Palladino
Directed by Lear deBessonet

Hudson Theatre 141 West 44th Street