‘Once Upon a Mattress’ Broadway Review: Maybe Sutton Foster and Michael Urie Should Switch Roles

If “Cats” can be turned into a show about drag balls, why not make “Once Upon a Mattress” a nonbinary love story? All that really needs to be done is change the “his” and “her” pronouns to “they” and “their.” Otherwise, most of the work has already been done: Princess Winnifred is a weight-lifter who likes to shorten her name to Fred. And the character’s big love interest is Prince Dauntless, who’s a beta boy with a controlling mother, Queen Aggravain.

In the current listless Broadway revival of “Mattress,” which opened Monday at the Hudson Theatre, director Lear deBessonet makes the unfortunate mistake of having the prince (Michael Urie) perform the role-assignment task of carrying the sleeping princess (Sutton Foster) across the stage. Too bad. Otherwise, Foster and Urie appear more than ready to switch roles multiple times.

“Once Upon a Mattress” started Off-Broadway in 1959 and quickly moved to Broadway, where it made Carol Burnett a star. Why someone who’s already a bona fide star like Foster wants to prop up a wet mess like “Mattress” is a complete mystery. When the derivative songs by Mary Rodgers and Marshall Barer are being sung, you want to get back to the story, based on the Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale “The Princess and the Pea.” And when the actors are reciting the tired lines from Barer, Jay Thompson and Dean Fuller’s book, you want to get back to the songs. Amy Sherman-Palladino receives an “adapted by” credit, but she punches down rather than up.

Urie brings a loopy charm to the prince, and Will Chase manages to recycle endless slurs on Sir Harry’s intelligence into something resembling jokes.

Foster gets off to a terrific start when she climbs over the castle wall, having swum the moat to deliver the “Shy” showstopper. She is more Marjorie Main than Carol Burnett, but that machismo works, especially when she pulls leaches off her back and a banjo from her crotch (costumes by Andrea Hood). But after retrieving a rodent from her snarly hair (wigs by J. Jared Janas), this actor has pretty much shot her wad as a comic.

An eating moment in “Mattress” is lifted from the famous “I Love Lucy” chocolate factory scene. Lucille Ball and Vivian Vance had the good taste not to show us their vomiting up those candies. Foster spits back enough grapes to stock a Gristedes. Later in the show, she eats a bar of soap and, yes, spits it out into her bathrobe.

Foster works even harder to turn the princess’ restless night atop a couple dozen mattresses and a tiny pea into a big comic moment. She has much more luck with the grapes. Nothing kills a joke faster than showing your sweat.

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