Once Upon a Mattress
Opening Night: August 12, 2024
Theater: Hudson Theatre
Website: onceuponamattressnyc.com
Direct from its sold-out, 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 Pickintroduces the unapologetically eccentric Winnifred to a repressed kingdom, where she charms, delights, and dances her way to the top… of a stack of mattresses.
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August 12, 2024
When it comes to this particular couple, Urie and Foster make you believe in a happy future that may include all kinds of calisthenics.
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August 13, 2024
Still, it’s ultimately easy to meet “Once Upon a Mattress” where it’s at and let the feel-good pageantry of the show sedate you. It’s perfectly charming with an inclusive spirit, snappy hooks and enough goofs to keep everyone in the family thrumming along.
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August 12, 2024
Transferring to the Hudson Theatre following a successful Encores! run this January, the production’s stacked cast is far from a band of teens – Broadway regulars Michael Urie, Ana Gasteyer and Will Chase are among the incredible talents on stage. Yet at its most joyful highpoints, even this high-class gathering of musical theater’s finest feels closer to a bunch of big kids playing dress up. To be clear—that’s a compliment. Mattress is an exceedingly silly show.
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August 12, 2024
While numbers like “Shy” and “Song of Love” are memorable because of their musical specificity and lyrical whimsy, others remain head-scratchingly forgettable. Foster carries Mattress just as Carol Burnett did in 1959, but the feat may now be too weighty.
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August 12, 2024
Which brings us to Sutton Foster, whose chops are the justification on which this production hangs, at least commercially. And she’s good. I’d guess from her performance that she closely studied videos of Burnett in the role, and she has grasped that overdoing it is the key to this show. So she mugs and leans in and leans out and does a funny little loose waggle with her hips between lines.
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August 12, 2024
But this is Foster’s show, and even more amazing than her vocal pipes, physical dexterity, and attention to emotional detail is the way all of it feels spontaneous, as if she’s coming up with these bits off the cuff. If Once Upon a Mattress reminds us of the lasting appeal of fairy tales, Foster reminds us of the thrilling spectacle of seeing performers work their magic live.
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August 12, 2024
And the show finally cannot overcome the casting of Foster, a game and fantastic performer who simply can’t find her way into a character who’s all sloppy id. Like a legume under your mattress, this casting is a small thing that, as the evening wears on, comes to feel massive.
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August 12, 2024
In short, Foster nails this performance, bringing what is, ever has been and always will be a mid-tier musical that has more unnecessary subplots and sing-song padding than an old mattress has feathers.
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August 12, 2024
Once Upon a Mattress is mostly alright, then at moments—thanks to Foster and the others—very funny, but never stunning. After this Broadway run it heads to Los Angeles. Its producers should be very grateful to Sutton Foster.
READ THE REVIEWAugust 12, 2024
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.
READ THE REVIEWAugust 12, 2024
Once Upon a Mattress offers laughs galore; flights of melody highlighted by the light-hearted romantic ballad “In a Little While,” that upbeat paean to “Normandy,” and that clarion-blasted swamp-heroine’s lament, “Shy”; and is likely to leave a wide grin on the face of happy playgoers. While it is not strictly a family musical just for families, it is sure to inculcate an appreciation for low-brow musical comedy artistry in younger audiences so bring ’em along.
READ THE REVIEWAugust 12, 2024
Bright and delightfully unserious, Sherman-Palladino’s adaptation is filled to the brim with buzzy dialogue and perfectly-timed punchlines that draw both laughs and shocked gasps from the crowd.
READ THE REVIEWAugust 12, 2024
What I saw as missing from this “Once Upon A Mattress” upon second viewing on Broadway, was an almost intangible alchemy that turns fun into comic mastery. Does it involve comic timing? Authenticity? Modulation? Pacing? I’m not sure.
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