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.
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.
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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