WE’RE GONNA NEED A BIGGER MOAT…
Direct from its sold-old, 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 Pick introduces the unapologetically eccentric Winnifred to a repressed kingdom, where she charms, delights, and dances her way to the top… of a stack of mattresses.
Book your tickets now to this uproarious production – “it will restore your fealty to the throne!” (Observer).
It takes about 30 minutes in Palladino’s version (and the terrific director Lear deBessonet) to get Foster out on stage. That’s how much she’s fleshed out the original, thin story. All the subsidiary characters now have back stories and quips galore. But in the end it’s all about Sutton Foster. She’s pulled from the best of Burnett nd Lucille Ball, including a scene that hearkens back to Lucy and the chocolate candies. But she’s updated their gifts so they blend with hers. Foster doesn’t have her signature tap dancing in this show, but her physicality is something we haven’t seen on Broadway in a long time. “Mattress” is supposed to be a limited run, but I’ll bet it goes on much longer.
Instead, there’s a certain stubbornness to this show’s insistence on trying to get by on sheer nerve, its refusal to try anything beyond the realm of physical comedy (through which Foster will try everything). In its staging and production, it’s of the highest order — the costumes, by Andrea Hood, wowed me, for instance. (I was particularly partial to the gaudily looping sleeves on the garment worn by the Jester — an outfit with more indulgence and wit than anything in the script.) 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.
| 1959 | Broadway |
Broadway Transfer Broadway |
| 1959 | Off-Broadway |
Original Off-Broadway Production Off-Broadway |
| 1960 | West End |
London Production West End |
| 1996 | Broadway |
Broadway Revival Broadway |
| 2004 | Regional (US) |
42nd Street Moon Concert Regional (US) |
| 2015 | Off-Broadway |
Transport Group Off-Broadway Revival Off-Broadway |
| 2024 | Broadway |
Broadway Revival Production Broadway |
| Year | Ceremony | Category | Nominee |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2025 | Drama Desk Awards | Outstanding Featured Performance in a Musical | Michael Urie |
| 2025 | Drama Desk Awards | Outstanding Lead Performance in a Musical | Sutton Foster |
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