If you can make Cats a show about drag queens, why not make Once Upon a Mattress a nonbinary love story? All you really have to do is change the pronouns “his” and “hers” to “she” and “theirs.” Otherwise, most of the work is already done: Princess Winnifred is a weightlifter who likes to shorten her name to Fred. And the character’s great lover is Prince Dauntless, a beta boy with a controlling mother, Queen Aggravain.
In the current lackluster Broadway revival of “Mattress,” which opened at the Hudson Theater on Monday, director Lear deBessonet makes the unfortunate mistake of giving the prince (Michael Urie) the role of carrying the sleeping princess (Sutton Foster) across the stage. What a pity. Otherwise, Foster and Urie seem more than willing to switch roles several times.
“Once Upon a Mattress” opened Off-Broadway in 1959 and quickly moved to Broadway, where it made a star of Carol Burnett. Why someone already a bona fide star like Foster would want to prop up a wet mess like “Mattress” is a complete mystery. When the derivative songs are sung by Mary Rodgers and Marshall Barer, one wants to go back to the story, which is based on the Hans Christian Andersen fairytale “The Princess and the Pea.” And when the actors recite the hackneyed lines from the book by Barer, Jay Thompson and Dean Fuller, one wants to go back to the songs. Amy Sherman-Palladino is credited as “adapted from,” but she hits down rather than up.
Urie brings a wacky charm to the prince, and Will Chase manages to turn endless denigrations of Sir Harry’s intelligence into something resembling jokes.
Foster gets off to a terrific start, climbing over the castle wall after swimming across the moat to deliver the “Shy” showstopper. She’s more Marjorie Main than Carol Burnett, but that macho look works, especially when she pulls leeches from her back and a banjo from her crotch (costumes by Andrea Hood). But after pulling a rodent out of her matted hair (wigs by J. Jared Janas), this actress has pretty much blown her comedic fortune.
One eating moment in “Mattress” is lifted from the famous chocolate factory scene from “I Love Lucy.” Lucille Ball and Vivian Vance had the good taste not to show us vomiting up that candy. Foster spits out enough grapes to fill a Gristedes bottle. Later in the show, she eats a bar of soap and spits it out, yes, in her bathrobe.
Foster works even harder to turn the princess’s restless night on a few dozen mattresses and a tiny pea into a great comic moment. She has much better luck with the grapes. Nothing spoils a joke faster than showing your sweat.
