August 10, 2000

Volume 21, Issue 33

In Review

Crass Princess Earns Laughs

The Fireside and longtime producer/director Ed Flesch have come up with one of their best shows, one perfectly suited to the playing space. It's the 1959 off-Broadway-to-Broadway hit Once Upon a Mattress (through Oct. 8). The cute, simple and imaginative musical should still delight audiences today. It abounds in attractive melodies by Mary Rodgers, more than you're likely to find in many scores of the recent decade. They go well with lots of clever, amusing lyrics by Marshall Barer matched by a just-right book by Barer, Jay Thompson and Dean Fuller. And the Fireside cast performs with true singing and acting talent, Flesch adding a few charms of his own in the staging. Moreover, Scott A. Lane and Matthew A.J. Gregory's costumes provide high-class color and detail.

Once Upon a Mattress retells, with many twists, Hans Christian Andersen's "The Princess and the Pea." The Princess is the brash, goofy and anything but dainty Princess Winnifred the Woebegone (commonly known as "Fred"). She becomes a contender for the hand of Prince Dauntless the Drab, whose mother Queen Agravain would rather hold that hand to her own bosom. The Queen has many nasty ways to test any women foolish enough to want to be her daughter-in-law.

Winnifred can prove her gentility only by suffering a sleepless night atop 20 mattresses, underneath which a solitary pea would disturb her. Dauntless really likes Fred. So does his father, King Sextimus the Silent. And two courtiers want Fred to triumph-the lovers Sir Harry and Lady Larkin, who can't get married until Dauntless does.

Tari Kelly's Fred exudes loads of broad charm, coupled with a true-toned singing voice. As the Minstrel, a narrator who gets involved in the action, Ken Kordick also sings with class and personality. Garry Lindemann plays Sir Harry with subtle, comic panache, even though he sounds a little unsteady when singing. As Agravain and Lady Larkin, Cathy Newman and Valerie Accetta show considerable professional polish. The only soft spot in an otherwise solid ensemble belongs to Michael Haws as King Septimus; he amateurishly overplays every potentially sweet moment.

Elements making Once Upon a Mattress so entertaining include Thompson, Barer and Fuller's ability to have fun with the period without relying on obvious anachronisms for laughs. Unfortunately (and characteristically for Fireside), their credits are not included in the program book. Nor are there any words about Mary Rodgers, the daughter of Broadway composer Richard Rodgers. Together and separately, these talents wrote several other shows. Ms. Rodgers also wrote the children's novel Freaky Friday.

But the Fireside rarely mentions creators of its shows in any publicity materials, while the dinner theater menu ingredients always get lots of detail. Despite such crassness, this time the Fireside offers more than one tasty treat.

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