WE’RE GONNA NEED A BIGGER MOAT…
Direct from its sold-old, record-breaking New York City Center Encores! run, Once Upon a Mattress returns to Broadway for the first time since 1996. Two-time Tony® winner Sutton Foster gives what The New York Times calls an “ebullient, joyful, perfectly goofy” performance as Princess Winnifred the Woebegone alongside royalty of stage and screen, Michael Urie.
Newly adapted by Amy Sherman-Palladino (The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel), this New York Times Critic’s Pick introduces the unapologetically eccentric Winnifred to a repressed kingdom, where she charms, delights, and dances her way to the top… of a stack of mattresses.
Book your tickets now to this uproarious production – “it will restore your fealty to the throne!” (Observer).
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.
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.
1959 | Broadway |
Broadway Transfer Broadway |
1959 | Off-Broadway |
Original Off-Broadway Production Off-Broadway |
1960 | West End |
London Production West End |
1996 | Broadway |
Broadway Revival Broadway |
2004 | Regional (US) |
42nd Street Moon Concert Regional (US) |
2015 | Off-Broadway |
Transport Group Off-Broadway Revival Off-Broadway |
2024 | Broadway |
Broadway Revival Production Broadway |
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