Once Upon a Mattress – Abrons Art Center, New York

John Epperson and Jackie Hoffman in Once Upon a Mattress at the Abrons Art Center, new York. Picture: Carol Rosegg

Once Upon a Mattress continues at the Abrons Art Center, New York until 3 January.

Star rating: four stars ★ ★ ★ ★ ✩

Jackie Hoffman, whose grumpy persona has provoked supporting player belly laughs in such Broadway offerings as Hairspray and On the Town, grabs the spotlight as a fully-fledged leading lady in the new mounting of Once Upon a Mattress.

Of course, her role of Princess Winnifred is not your conventional leading lady. She’s an ungainly, bespectacled lass, but the character gives Hoffman frequent opportunities to flash a winning smile along with her sourpuss physiognomy and most gratifyingly to amply exercise her terrific multi-range singing voice. And while this revival is Off-Broadway rather than on the Great White Way, the producing Transport Group and its director Jack Cummings III have infused the production with more than a reasonable facsimile of Broadway pizzazz: a 19-person cast, a 13-member orchestra and colourful costumes aplenty. It‘s all contained in one of  New York’s most charming little theatres at the Abrons Art Center, sequestered on the Lower East Side.

Once Upon a Mattress first emerged Off-Broadway in 1959, winning fans with its exceptionally vivacious music by Mary Rodgers and sharply-honed lyrics by Marshall Barer. That same year it moved to Broadway, with the original production racking up 244 performances. It also catapulted Carol Burnett to showbusiness stardom. A 1996 Broadway revival gave Sarah Jessica Parker the chance to show off her comedic proclivities, and there have been three television adaptations.

Except perhaps for its suggestive title, the show is pretty much smut-free in its saucy take on Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tale The Princess and the Pea, so it’s been popular as well with high schools and colleges. (There is a pre-nuptial pregnancy, but is that shocking these days?)

When Winnifred emerges (after swimming a moat) as a contender for the hand of Prince Dauntless, her not-so-princess-like demeanour immediately puts off his mum, Queen Aggravain, who rules this particular roost and in any event is not particularly keen in marrying off her offspring. But Winnifred – with the help of chums she has made at court – eventually passes a “sensitivity test” proving her princess credentials and opening the way to royal matrimony.

In addition to bringing Hoffman centrestage, Transport Group gives her a formidable nemesis in John Epperson’s Aggravain. Epperson, whose alter ego Lypsinka is a drag icon in downtown theatre circles, makes this particular queen a statuesque combo of Wicked Witch and 1940s Hollywood diva. When she towers over the diminutive Hoffman in their first confrontation it’s a sight gag worth its freezing.

The cast is studded throughout with first-rate talents, and they’re given a number of chances to demonstrate it. Jason Sweet Tooth Williams is a likeable and pleasantly rotund Prince Dauntless. His enchantment with Hoffman’s Winnifred is endearing, and in the number ‘Man to Man Talk’, it’s fun to watch his growing comprehension of the facts of life under the expertly pantomimed tutelage of David Greenspan, portraying his father, the mute King Sextimus.

As the more conventional lovers, Lady Larken and Sir Harry, Jessica Fontana and Zak Resnick charm with fine renditions of Rodger’s effervescent ballads, ‘In a  Little While’ and ‘Yesterday I Loved You’. As The Minstrel who gets mixed up in their bumpy romance, Hunter Ryan Herdlicka adds to the vocal richness. The dance highlight comes with Cory Lingner as The Jester, showing us how his dancer dad wowed “the palace”, dancing in ‘Very Soft Shoes’. (Choreography and musical staging are by Scott Rink.)

The celebrated inventiveness of director Cummings is also evident in the physical production. The colour-rich costumes by Kathryn Rohe and the scenic design by Sandra Goldmark are augmented by cartoon-like drawings – primarily black and white – projected live onto the set as they are being drawn by illustrator Ken Fallin. It heightens the buoyant, animated fairy tale ambiance.

What could use a bit more buoyancy is the book by Jay Thompson, Dean Fuller and Barer. It’s undoubtedly clever, but it does occasionally hit some lumpy moments, particularly in depicting Aggravain’s villainy in cahoots with a wizard. It also gives us the score’s most memorable number early on, Winnifred’s ‘Shy’, a boisterously inaccurate description of her personality that stops the show, heightened by both Hoffman’s glorious rendition and the witty staging. It’s hard for anything that comes later to match it. It’s like putting ‘Rose’s Turn’ early in Act I of Gypsy.

But these are small quibbles when it comes to more than two hours of musical comedy that bubble very much like newly uncorked vintage champagne. It’s a happy and worthy testimony as well to the talent of Mary Rodgers, Richard Rodgers’ daughter, who died in 2014 and to whose memory the production is dedicated.

Ron Cohen

www.transportgroup.org/once-upon-mattress

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