Once Upon A Mattress Broadway Reviews

When it comes to this particular couple, Urie and Foster make you believe in a happy future that may include all kinds of calisthenics.

While the musical may have its lulls during the second act — and drag some of its overly-exaggerated gags for just a smidge too long at times — it's hard not to find joy in watching Foster silently entertain an entire audience on her own by trying her hand at ye olde Chubby Bunny Challenge. If a jolly, slightly risqué spin on a classic fairytale is what you're looking for, then don't sleep on this revival. B+

Director Lear DeBessonet does her very best to keep the goings-on humming, but Mattress gives her so, so much less to work with than what she was got from Sondheim’s Into The Woods, another recent Encores!-to-Broadway project that was easily one of the most satisfying bits of alchemy to arise from the long history of that beloved City Centers endeavor. Mattress has, and always will, feel like a sketch or one-act with one essential song (“Shy”) padded with unnecessary characters and sub-par musical interludes, all designed to forestall the show’s 11 O’Clock number, which in this musical has nothing to do with belting a song.

Scrapbooking (a much funnier word with not one but two k sounds) gets a big laugh and then so do glue and trust issues. This exchange, containing as it does so much phrasing from the present day, may not hold up in another revival 60-odd years from now, but it absolutely works today. Which is, frankly, a lot of what a revival like this is about. You stage it because, in this moment, Sutton Foster exists and can pull off Winnifred — with an endorsement from the grande dame, now 91, herself. You also stage it because, if you’re lucky, thousands upon thousands of theatergoers will say, “I was in that show in high school,” and they might buy tickets to see as well wrought a version as can be done. Which, given the limitations of the show itself, this one may well be.

Instead, there’s a certain stubbornness to this show’s insistence on trying to get by on sheer nerve, its refusal to try anything beyond the realm of physical comedy (through which Foster will try everything). In its staging and production, it’s of the highest order — the costumes, by Andrea Hood, wowed me, for instance. (I was particularly partial to the gaudily looping sleeves on the garment worn by the Jester — an outfit with more indulgence and wit than anything in the script.) And the show finally cannot overcome the casting of Foster, a game and fantastic performer who simply can’t find her way into a character who’s all sloppy id. Like a legume under your mattress, this casting is a small thing that, as the evening wears on, comes to feel massive.

It takes about 30 minutes in Palladino’s version (and the terrific director Lear deBessonet) to get Foster out on stage. That’s how much she’s fleshed out the original, thin story. All the subsidiary characters now have back stories and quips galore. But in the end it’s all about Sutton Foster. She’s pulled from the best of Burnett nd Lucille Ball, including a scene that hearkens back to Lucy and the chocolate candies. But she’s updated their gifts so they blend with hers. Foster doesn’t have her signature tap dancing in this show, but her physicality is something we haven’t seen on Broadway in a long time. “Mattress” is supposed to be a limited run, but I’ll bet it goes on much longer.

It took over two decades, but Foster is now finally playing Winnifred in a Broadway revival of “Mattress” based on an Encores! production at City Center from earlier this year. As expected, Foster is sublime, and the production is a tuneful, old-fashioned, flamboyant, altogether blissful romp.

★★★★☆ Sutton Foster unleashes her inner clown in a torrent of hilarity, bringing new luster to a familiar property

★★★★☆ Another Encores! musical comedy winner takes up residence on Broadway

Yes, hilarious—but for the stretches where Foster isn’t on stage, you sure do miss her. The other actors serve up some appealing light comedy and subplots to keep the motor puttering, but in act two this all amounts to one flimsy diversion after another. Once Upon a Mattress is mostly alright, then at moments—thanks to Foster and the others—very funny, but never stunning. After this Broadway run it heads to Los Angeles. Its producers should be very grateful to Sutton Foster.

The production, directed in haste by Lear deBessonet, is not without its flaws. Personally, I’m tired of lazily staged, barebones Encores! concerts being lugged to Broadway like a surprisingly nice couch somebody found on the curb. Still, Foster is such a smash that you forgive most of the peripheral problems.

But Michael Urie, in transmogrifying the dopey Dauntless, doesn’t so much fill shoes as turn shoemaker, cobbling his own glorious take on the role that’s wildly silly but also moving. Foster upholds the reputation of Once Upon a Mattress—especially its goofy-gorgeous score by composer Mary Rodgers and lyricist Marshall Barer—as a quick-witted, big-hearted gem. It’s Urie who convinces, for the first time, that this musical isn’t just about a spunky, scrappy princess succeeding against the odds but also a real love story between two moonstruck misfits.

“Once Upon A Mattress” opened tonight for its third turn on Broadway, with Sutton Foster’s performance as Princess Winnifred the Woebegone the same goofy and intense workout that proved a draw earlier this year in a two-week run of the 1959 musical comedy as part of the Encores! concert series at New York City Center. The production, which has replaced four of the eight principal cast members, is otherwise largely unchanged now that it has transferred to the Hudson Theater. It is still tuneful, fun, well-sung. But it plays differently for me now. On Broadway, it feels like high school.

Not in “Once Upon a Mattress.” Not as the above-the-title star climbs all over the signature bedding in search of a pea, or whatever. It takes guts, skill and talent, and Foster always has had all three of those happening at once. She’s clearly having a good time and you either jump on the Good Ship Sutton, or you’ll keep falling overboard all night long.

Happily, Ms. Foster’s newest Broadway role not only encourages but demands an over-the-top quality. Princess Winnifred, the boisterous, brawny, moat-swimming heroine of “Once Upon A Mattress,” is nothing if not overwhelming, and the part also accommodates the sly wit that has made Ms. Foster a successor to Moore as much as her million-dollar smile.