Once upon a time there was a mattress stands in the longest of long shadows. The lead role of Princess Winnifred was Carol Burnett’s breakthrough role in 1959, and who on earth would want to be compared to her? Although the play is constantly performed at drama club level – because it’s funny and silly, colorful and slapstick, has a fairy-tale plot, and requires a solid number of roles to be distributed among the eleventh graders – it is not produced all that often in large, professional settings. This may also be because, despite the story’s frothiness, Winnifred is actually quite a difficult role. The play’s composer, Mary Rodgers, had this to say in the wonderful memoir she co-wrote with Jesse Green:
It’s a very difficult role to cast. You need a real clown with a great voice, someone with a strong personality but who you immediately like, and there aren’t many actors like that.
Since the original production, the show has only come to Broadway once, in 1996 with Sarah Jessica Parker, and she wasn’t quite up to it. Burnett screamed and honked and hurled herself across the stage, playing Winnifred too loudly and too broadly and therefore just right; Parker, whatever her comedic ability, isn’t the same kind of physically robust, almost circus-like performer, and that exposed the show’s weaknesses. And those weaknesses are real: It’s silly, with a 1950s battle-of-the-sexes-style sass that’s fun but maybe not fun for 150 minutes, and a mother-son plot that I think sprang from the Freudian analysis that was in vogue in New York at the time. Also, the climax and resolution are crammed into the end of the second act and feel a little rushed. In other words, it’s a weak show, but it can be lifted up by some stunning performances, especially in the role of Winnifred.
Which brings us to Sutton Foster, whose skill is the foundation of this production, at least commercially. And it’s good. I’d guess from her performance that she’s watched videos of Burnett in the role and realized that exaggeration is the key to this show. So she makes faces, leans forward and backward, and wiggles her hips in a fun, easygoing way between lines. (Her costumes also lend themselves to a number of stage tricks that I won’t give away here.) She’s not quite the cheering and roaring presence that is Burnett’s ideal of Winnifred – Foster is a bit more eager and ingratiating as a performer than carefree. Burnett, as a comedian, often seems to jump and then look, like Wile E. Coyote throwing himself over the cliff; Foster sometimes seems to get a glimpse first. But the most important thing about this role is simply to go as big as possible, and that’s what she does. Only in her climactic scene in the second act – the princess has to toss and turn on 20 mattresses for minutes at a time, using pure clowning to coax every possible giggle – does it go on a moment too long, and you can hear the laughter die down before the scene ends. By then she’s probably won you over, especially with her performance of “Shy,” the song that does a lot in the middle of the first act.
Foster isn’t the only one who goes full throttle. Ana Gasteyer as her mother, Queen Aggravain, has a noble, evil monarch voice and delivers excellent eye-rolling. Michael Urie plays Prince Dauntless as a slightly mopey, slightly elfin, thoroughly winning sweetheart. The wizard and the jester, played by a couple of pros (Brooks Ashmanskas and Daniel Breaker), and the mostly taciturn king (David Patrick Kelly, who was a delight in Into the forest a few years ago), if surrounded by weaker co-stars, they would all tirelessly steal the show. Instead, it’s evenly balanced, strength upon strength.
This production comes to the Hudson Theatre as part of the Encores! series of short performances at City Center, where it ran over the winter. (My colleague Jackson McHenry reviewed it there.) Like most productions that originate at Encores!, it is rather sparsely staged, but that doesn’t hurt it. (Apparently the original itself was a low-budget production, as are virtually all of these school-run versions, so why not?) Flat banners serve as the main decoration, and the orchestra stands on a platform behind the cast, from which there are a few steps down to the stage. These steps are part of a gag that Urie, as the goofy prince, keeps coming back to. It’s pretty much the same treatment that was used in Into the forest as well directed as this one by Lear deBessonet. Their ingenuity is a useful demonstration of how to save money without sacrificing anything.
Because the original book is showing its age (as many mid-century musicals tend to do), Amy Sherman-Palladino did some rewriting for this production, and I admit I initially wondered if it would work. The snappy patter that works so well out of Rory and Lorelai Gilmore’s mouths, I thought, might go down as well as a middle-aged English teacher trying to describe Iago as “sus.” As it turns out, I had gotten it wrong. The show’s fluffy antics and somewhat witty medieval setting perfectly suit its quick wit, and some of the new lines really charge a scene. Here’s a snippet from the original:
LARKS: I was dizzy, that’s all. I was sitting in my room… sewing… and it was getting a little stuffy, so I decided to come out and get some air.
FOOL: I see you were planning on camping for a while.
It would pass with minimal notice. While in the new version
LARKS: Hurry? Me? No, I was just sitting in my room…scrapbooking…and it was getting a bit stuffy from all the glue – so I decided to get out and get some fresh air.
FOOL: With everything you own?
LARKS: I have trust issues.
Scrapbooking (a much funnier word with not one, but two k noises) gets a lot of laughter and then Glue And Trust issues. This exchange, which contains so many contemporary phrases, may not be timely in another revival 60 years from now, but it certainly works today. And that, frankly, is a big part of what a revival like this is about. You put it on because Sutton Foster exists in this moment and can play Winnifred – with the support of the grande dame herself, now 91. You put it on too 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 good a version as it gets. And that, given the limitations of the show itself, this one might well be.
