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Once Upon a Mattressexists under the longest of long shadows.
(Her costumes also accommodate a bunch of stagecraft tricks that I wont spoil.)
Foster isnt the only one running with the throttle wide open.
Ana Gasteyer, as Queen Aggravain, summons a plummy mean-monarch voice and delivers excellent eye rolls.
Michael Urie plays Prince Dauntless as a slightly dim, slightly fey, entirely winning sweetie.
Instead, its balanced, strength on strength.
This production comes to the Hudson Theatre via the Encores!
series of short-run revivals at City Center, where it played over the winter.
(My colleague Jackson McHenryreviewed it there.)
Like most productions that originate at Encores!, its rather thinly staged, which does it no harm.
Those stairs figure in a gag that Urie, as the doofus prince, continually returns to.
Its roughly the same treatment thatpresentedInto the Woodsso well, directed, like this one, by Lear deBessonet.
Her resourcefulness is a useful demonstration of how to save a buck without sacrificing a thing.
As it turns out, I had it backward.
Heres a snippet from the original:
LARKEN:I felt faint, that was all.
JESTER:I see you were planning to camp out for a while.
It would slip by with minimal notice.
Whereas in the rewrite, its
LARKEN:Hurry?
JESTER:With everything you own?
LARKEN:I have trust issues.
Which is, frankly, a lot of what a revival like this is about.
Which, given the limitations of the show itself, this one may well be.
