Broadway By Design: ONCE UPON A MATTRESS

In Broadway by Design, BroadwayWorld is shining a spotlight on the stellar designs of this Broadway season, show by show. Today, we continue with the creatives from Once Upon a Mattress- Scenic Designer David Zinn, Sound Designer Kai Harada, Hair, Wig, and Makeup Designer J. Jarad Janas, and Costume Designer Andrea Hood.

An uproarious update of Hans Christian Andersen’s “The Princess and the Pea,”  Once Upon A Mattress sets an unapologetic free spirit loose in a repressed kingdom, where Winnifred the Woebegone charms, delights, and dances her way to the top… of a stack of mattresses.  

Where did the design process start? The show's start at Encores! had a huge impact on Zinn's design. "The goal was to find a fast big and quick way to capture the mid-century optimism and whimsy of the piece in a way that felt fun and fresh, and in front of which our actors and orchestra could shine like jewels," he explained. "I also wanted to find a way to make the idea of heraldry and medieval design a little fresher and a little less “scary eagles and lions on banners.

"My jumping off point was Deborah Sussman’s brilliant design for the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics which I have been obsessed with since I was at those Olympics as a spectator. Her work is  a masterclass in design— it took a 'classical' vocabulary and freshened the bejesus out of it thought a bold use of shape and color: both pomp and fun. I took the color away from it so it was just black and white and grey (a 'clean' space that Princess Winnifred could get dirty), and that way Andrea could run total riot with color for the characters, and Justin could use all the color he wanted in his beautiful lights. I also think that every Encores! concert is a love letter to New York in some way, so i made a 'New York heraldry' for the production—rats and hot dogs and taxis and pigeons and bagels (which everyone thinks are donuts, but that’s okay too)."

Andrea Hood looked to medieval films from the 1950s. "Movies like Quentin Durward and The Black Shield of Falworth. I appreciate how those designs reflected medieval detailing with style lines and influences of the 1950’s (which is also the era Mattress was written)," she explained. "I wanted to take the dynamics of that blend and apply it to a contemporary design that felt as playful as the show demands while being unique to our production and updated book."

Janas' designs were tailored to each actor. "For the ensemble, I was very inspired by each actor's own hair, and figuring out how it would look in 1428, where each person in the Kingdom had to maintain a very proper appearance.

"For the Queen, I took color inspiration from the costume, as well as from Michelle Visage of RuPaul's Drag Race Fame. Her shock of white in the front of her feels both mature and whimsical. So I added three shocks of white to the Queen's wig, and it lends her a certain stature," he explained.

"And then there's Fred. We know that story. She swims a mote, and even falls back into. And we knew we wanted plants and animals to be incorporated into the wig. We also knew that the wig needed to look really dirty/muddy. The inspiration for Fred's two wigs comes directly from these needs. (See "biggest challenges" below for the rest of this story.)"

Harada called on past experience from designing other shows at the Hudson Theatre. "My general rule about sound designing for a musical- especially one that is so beloved- is to to not screw it up; given the short turnaround between finding out about the transfer and actually doing it, I was certainly concerned about creating a sonically beautiful and appropriate environment for the show at the Hudson, especially knowing how little tech and preview time we had," he explained. "In contrast to the more 'visual' design departments, my job focuses a lot more on the theatre itself, how it sounds, and where I can put speakers. 

"The one saving grace was being able to rely on my previous experiences at the Hudson- not only did I design the recently-closed Merrily We Roll Along at the Hudson, but I also designed the Hudson's first musical upon reopening- also a transfer from City Center- Sunday in the Park with George, *and* Head Over Heels.  Obviously these shows are all sonically different, but I could reference what worked on Merrily and Sunday in the Park especially, to create a natural but clear-sounding show, and I adjusted accordingly to make sure Bruce Coughlin's amazing orchestrations, the clever text and lyrics, and the cast's incredible energy could all be experienced without the audience having to pay attention to the sound system."

What were the designers' biggest hurdles? "Finding fabrics special enough to indicate the status of each character with texture and depth was a real treasure hunt," said Hood. "Not just colorful, but with interest and subtlety. For example, Sutton’s pink robe is made from a vintage chenille blanket I found combing through Etsy, because you cannot buy that fabric with those motifs in a store in 2024. But I knew I wanted a Lucille Ball-inspired chenille robe for act two, so I worked with the amazing team at the costume shop Tricorne to help figure out how to make it work." 

Creating Fred's wig was a complicated process for Janas. "Since we knew what Fred's first wig needed to be and do, the trick was figuring out how to design it so that it could not only be used well on stage, but also so that it could remain clean at all times for the actor," he explained. "So I created a two-piece system for the wig: Piece 1 was the base wig which you really cannot see. It's the piece that actually sits on Sutton's head and touches her skin. This base wig can be washed as usual. Piece 2 is a hairpiece known as a ladder, where we actually connect strips of hair together to create a long hairpiece. This hairpiece has all the seaweed, green mud, brown mud, strings, and even a hidden creature on it. This piece gets pinned right on top of Piece 1, effectively hiding Piece 1."

"Then, of course, Fred has to get cleaned up. When we were figuring out how to cut the second wig, both the costume designer and I were inspired by a scene in the movie Sixteen Candles, where one character gets her hair caught in a door, and another character takes a large pair of paper-cutting scissors and just chops some of the hair off to free her friend. So, I actually took a large pair of paper-cutting scissors and just started cutting the wig at angles that the ladies-in-waiting might have used to cut Fred's hair to remove the mud and animals from it. The costume designer and I even shared this inspiration with the director, who added those large scissors into the scene when the hair is cut. In the end, I left a large section of the second wig still backcombed, implying that the ladies-in-waiting didn't want to cut her hair too short, even if it meant leaving some knots in her hair."

"My biggest challenge was space and time! Even reduced down from the original Encores! size, we had a big fabulous orchestra that needed a home onstage on the set (as per the wonderful encores tradition) which meant very little room downstage of them for our company to sing and dance and act and be funny," added Zinn. "Nevermind changing locations! So every tiny inch of that space is put into vital service. And also just…time. The model of these transferring Encores productions is awesome, and i love that it delivers these wonderful classic musicals so quickly and directly to the audience, but it means the whole process moves at lightning speed. Which is part of the fun of it of course but wowsa. We started tech and then we sneezed and then there was an audience. But the chance to make a platter that serves up Mary Rodgers’ score with Sutton and Michael and Daniel and Anna and Brooks… such a gift and much fun, even at warp speed." 

Once Upon a Mattress is running on Broadway at the Hudson Theatre.