To name Sutton Foster’s efficiency in “Once Upon a Mattress” bodily can be a gross understatement. Not often have toes performed such a outstanding function within the historical past of musical comedy.
Foster deploys them with the flexibility of arms in her double-jointed portrayal of Princess Winnifred, the function that helped remodel Carol Burnett right into a nationwide comedy treasure. These will not be straightforward footwear to step into, however Foster spends a lot of her time onstage barefoot, pawing her approach into the half with these soiled, bare-soled, hilariously expressive toes of hers.
Her agile decrease extremities would possibly lead you to consider that Foster is fabricated from rubber. Her legs splay, tilt and leap readily into pratfall motion. The easy grace of her tumbling suggests a brand new department of choreography.
A two-time Tony Award winner (“Thoroughly Modern Millie,” “Anything Goes”), Foster is a bona fide triple risk. On this New York Metropolis Heart Encores! revival of “Once Upon a Mattress,” which has arrived on the Ahmanson Theatre direct from Broadway, she approaches slapstick with the identical dexterity she would a Cole Porter faucet quantity.
“Once Upon a Mattress,” which had its Broadway premiere in 1959, may not be a fantastic musical, however in the suitable arms it may be a giddily entertaining one. Lear deBessonet, who directed the magical 2022 Broadway revival of “Into the Woods” that got here to the Ahmanson final 12 months, succeeds as soon as once more in restoring the lustrous shade to a classic musical.
There’s no disguising that “Mattress” is a property from one other Broadway period. The guide by Jay Thompson, Marshall Barer and Dean Fuller, which infuses vaudevillian mirth into “The Princess and the Pea,” has been up to date by Amy Sherman-Palladino to be extra in step with modern sensitivities. However this style of musical smacks of an earlier sketch-comedy age.
The humor nonetheless tickles, particularly when the rating by Mary Rodgers (music) and Barer (lyrics) accelerates the excessive jinks. The fairy-tale saga of a candy but stunted lonely prince looking for a princess bride who will move his merciless mom’s purity checks doesn’t want a lot to deliriously take off. And the inventive workforce pulls out all of the foolish stops.
Burnett, who went from starring in “Mattress” to successful an Emmy Award for her work on “The Garry Moore Show,” was born for this type of bodily comedy. The musical could be seen as making ready the way in which for “The Carol Burnett Show,” the legendary selection program that made musical comedy revue a staple of Saturday evening tv within the Nineteen Seventies.
Foster has typically been in comparison with Mary Tyler Moore for her pixieish appeal and dancerly class. In “Mattress,” she affords shades not solely of Burnett but additionally of Imogene Coca. There’s a touching, lonely high quality to her cockeyed clown portrayal of Winnifred, “the strangely energetic swamp girl,” who has arrived on the citadel as a marital prospect for Prince Dauntless (Michael Urie) coated in mud and leeches after swimming the moat.
Her filthy look isn’t the one cause Queen Aggravain (Ana Gasteyer) spurns her. If the prince takes a spouse, it brings the queen’s personal reign nearer to an finish, a thought she can’t abide. And so she has infantilized her son, treating him like a hapless boy, which is the state of his manhood till Winnifred awakens in him grownup longings that spur his delinquent maturity.
Prince Dauntless calls for that his mom give Fred, as she likes to be known as, an opportunity to turn out to be his spouse. His ardour for her grows to such a pitch that he begins bounding up stairs as a substitute of crawling over them like a mollycoddled toddler.
Urie is a key a part of the revival’s successful technique. Adorably camp, he’s each farcically harmless and suggestively naughty. He pertains to Winnifred as each pal and potential bedmate, and as their bond intensifies, his barely bizarre familiarity with one of many male servants grows extra brusque.
Gasteyer performs the villainous queen with depraved abandon. Her laughs come from taking the joke additional than you would possibly anticipate. However her over-the-top comedy is as recent as it’s broad. There’s no room for subtlety, however the Freudian monster she creates hits her fiendishly humorous marks.
David Patrick Kelly as King Sextimus the Silent spends a lot of his stage time engaged in a collection of charades. Having misplaced the facility of speech due to a witch’s curse, the king should act out what he needs to speak. Spryly hilarious, Kelly lends the henpecked husband’s subversive streak a bumbling gentleness.
Daniel Breaker and the forged of “Once Upon a Mattress.”
(Joan Marcus)
Daniel Breaker because the Jester is as droll a narrator as he’s dreamy a singer. A grasp of side-eye, he offers “Mattress” a contact of “Pippin” and makes the present appear timeless at any time when he’s onstage.
I missed a number of of the New York forged members, who didn’t make the journey. The function of the Wizard, which was performed by the singularly outlandish Brooks Ashmanskas, now could be portrayed by Kevin Del Aguila, who finds a special vein of humor, turning the character right into a hack magician, determined to resurrect his hoary act.
The function of Woman Larken, which Nikki Renée Daniels vividly fleshed out on Broadway, now could be performed by Oyoyo Joi. And Ben Davis has taken over the a part of Sir Harry from Will Chase. Daniels and Chase introduced extra oomph to their characters’ romantic entanglement, which has left Woman Larken fortunately if inconveniently with little one, a springboard for the entire screwy marital plot. (Nobody can get hitched till Prince Dauntless ties the knot.) However Joi and Davis acquit themselves properly in an organization that appears to be having as a lot enjoyable because the viewers.
The musical has a number of vibrant comedian numbers. “Shy” is deservedly one of the best identified, however “The Swamps of Home” and “Happily Ever After” have their very own delectable fizz. There are some useless patches within the present, nevertheless. Lorin Latarro’s antic choreography helps cowl up the repetitive conclusion of Act I. However there’s no hiding the overstretched nature of Act II.
Irrespective of. The revival’s inviting playfulness retains us in good spirits. David Zinn’s scenic design adopts a puppet theater jocularity and Andrea Hood’s storybook costumes are as vivid as a field of Colorforms.
However the true animation comes from the gamers. When Foster’s Winnifred climbs down from the mountain of mattresses a drained wreck and walks into her shock completely satisfied ending, it’s laborious to not share within the theatrical pleasure of a proficient firm hell-bent on entertaining us.
‘Once Upon a Mattress’
The place: Ahmanson Theatre, 135 N. Grand Ave., L. A.
When: 8 p.m. Tuesdays-Fridays, 2 and eight p.m. Saturdays, 1 and 6:30 p.m. Sundays; by Jan. 5
Tickets: Begin at $51.75
Contact: centertheatregroup.org or (213) 628-2772
Working time: 2 hours, half-hour, together with one intermission