Once Upon a Mattress

Tony Award winner Sutton Foster (Anything Goes, The Music Man) will lead the Broadway cast, reprising her acclaimed performance as Winnifred the Woebegone, hailed by The New York Times as “perfectly goofy, and imprinted with an ebullient, joyful relish in the very act of performance.”An uproarious update of Hans Christian Andersen’s “The Princess and the Pea,” Once Upon A Mattress sets an unapologetic free spirit loose in a repressed kingdom, reveling in Winnifred’s ability to charm and transform with willpower, honesty, and a little bit of help from her friends.  Full of gloriously catchy melodies like “Shy” and “In a Little While,” the musical first premiered in 1959, with music by Mary Rodgers, lyrics by Marshall Barer, and book by Jay Thompson, Dean Fuller, and Marshall Barer.

Declared a “Critic’s Pick” during its record-breaking run this year, as the highest-grossing show to date for City Center’s Encores! series, The New York Times raved, “Sutton Foster makes a banquet of the material…with infectious gusto. Her glee in taking possession of the stage creates an all-encompassing manic energy that both the audience and her scene partners feed off.” New York Magazine wrote that Foster’s “escalating feats of strength, flexibility, and musicality, are sure to get the heart pumping and the crowd laughing. Let these weirdos rule the kingdom!”