Review: Sutton Foster delights in ‘Once Upon a Mattress’

To call Sutton Foster’s performance in “Once Upon a Mattress” physical would be a gross understatement. Rarely have feet played such a prominent role in the history of musical comedy.

Foster employs them with the versatility of her hands in her double-jointed portrayal of Princess Winnifred, the role that helped turn Carol Burnett into a national comedy treasure. These aren’t easy shoes to step into, but Foster spends much of her time on stage barefoot, pawing her way into the party with her dirty, bare-soled, hilariously expressive feet.

Her lithe lower limbs might make you think Foster is made of rubber. Her legs spread, flip and jump lightly in pratfall action. The effortless grace of her tumbling suggests a new branch of choreography.

Foster is a two-time Tony Award winner (“Thoroughly Modern Millie,” “Anything Goes”) and is a triple threat. In this New York City Center Encores! revival of “Once Upon a Mattress,” which has arrived at the Ahmanson Theater direct from Broadway, she approaches slapstick with the same deftness she would a Cole Porter tap number.

“Once Upon a Mattress,” which had its Broadway premiere in 1959, may not be a big musical, but in the right hands it can be a dizzyingly entertaining one. Lear deBessonet, who directed the magical 2022 Broadway revival of “Into the Woods” that came to the Ahmanson last year, once again succeeds in recreating the lustrous color of a vintage musical.

There’s no disguising the fact that “mattress” is a property from another Broadway era. The book by Jay Thompson, Marshall Barer and Dean Fuller, which infuses vaudevillian joy into “The Princess and the Pea,” has been updated by Amy Sherman-Palladino to be more in line with contemporary sensibilities. But this musical genre smacks of an earlier sketch comedy age.

The humor still tickles, especially when the score by Mary Rodgers (music) and Barer (lyrics) accelerates the high jinks. The fairytale saga of a cute but crippled lonely prince trying to find a princess bride who will pass his cruel mother’s purity test doesn’t take much to get going. And the creative team pulls out all the silly stops.

Burnett, who went from starring in “Mattress” to winning an Emmy Award for her work on “The Garry Moore Show,” was born for this kind of physical comedy. The musical can be seen as paving the way for “The Carol Burnett Show,” the legendary variety show that made the musical comedy revue a staple of Saturday night television in the 1970s.

Foster has sometimes been compared to Mary Tyler Moore for her pixie charm and dancing elegance. In “Madras,” she offers shades not only of Burnett, but also of Imogene Coca. There’s a poignant, lonely quality to her dull clown portrayal of Winnifred, “the strangely energetic swampy”, who has arrived at the castle as a matrimonial prospect for Prince Dauntless (Michael Urie), covered in mud and leeches after swimming in the moat.

Her dirty looks aren’t the only reason Queen Aggravain (Ana Gasteyer) despises her. If the prince takes a wife, it brings the queen’s own reign closer to an end, a thought she cannot bear. And so she has infantilized her son, treating him as an unhappy boy, which is the state of his manhood until Winnifred awakens in him adult longings that spur his criminal maturity.

Prince Dauntless demands that his mother give Fred, as she likes to be called, a chance to become his wife. His passion for her grows to such an extent that he begins to climb stairs instead of crawling over them like a mollycoddled toddler.

Urie is an important part of the revival’s winning strategy. Adorably camp, he is both farcically innocent and suggestively cheeky. He relates to Winnifred as both friend and future bedfellow, and as their bond intensifies, his slightly odd familiarity with one of the male servants becomes more brusque.

Gasteyer plays the villainous queen with wicked abandon. Her laugh comes from taking the joke further than you might expect. But her over-the-top comedy is as fresh as it is broad. There’s no room for subtlety, but the Freudian monster she creates hits her devilishly funny marks.

David Patrick Kelly as King Sextimus the Silent spends much of his stage time in a number of performances. Having lost the power of speech due to a witch’s curse, the king must act out what he wants to communicate. Kelly, who is hilarious, gives the chicken husband’s subversive streak a bubbly gentleness.

Daniel Breaker and the cast of “Once Upon a Mattress”.

(Joan Marcus)

Daniel Breaker as Jester is as dull a narrator as he is a dreamy singer. A master of the side eye, he gives “Matress” a touch of “Pippin” and makes the show seem timeless when he’s on stage.

I missed a few of the cast in New York who didn’t make the trip. The role of the wizard, played by the singularly quirky Brooks Ashmanskas, is now portrayed by Kevin Del Aguila, who finds another humorous spirit, turning the character into a hackneyed magician desperate to revive his greedy act.

The role of Lady Larken, which Nikki Renée Daniels vividly performed on Broadway, is now played by Oyoyo Joi. And Ben Davis has taken over the role of Sir Harry from Will Chase. Daniels and Chase brought more spice to their characters’ romantic entanglement, leaving Lady Larken happily, if inconveniently, with child, a springboard for the whole lopsided marital plot. (No one can get hitched until Prince Dauntless ties the knot.) But Joi and Davis acquit themselves well in company that seems to be having as much fun as the audience.

The musical has a few lively comedy numbers. “Shy” is deservedly the best known, but “The Swamps of Home” and “Happily Ever After” have their own delicious effervescence. However, there are some dead spots in the show. Lorin Latarro’s antique choreography helps cover up the repetitive ending of Act 1. But there’s no hiding that Act II is overloaded.

Doesn’t matter. The inviting playfulness of revival keeps us in good spirits. David Zinn’s scenic designs take on a puppetry jocularity, and Andrea Hood’s storybook costumes are as vivid as a box of Colorforms.

But the real animation comes from the players. As Foster’s Winnifred climbs down from the mountain of mattresses a tired wreck and walks into her surprisingly happy ending, it’s hard not to share in the theatrical joy of a talented company determined to entertain us.