Theatre in Review: Once Upon a Mattress (Transport Group/Abrons Art Center)

	Jackie Hoffman and company. Photo: Carol Rosegg

As much as we love them, stars are a terrible problem. For one thing, there's the challenge of finding the right star for a role. For another, there's the problem of a star performance that continues to cast a shadow long after closing night. These thoughts occurred to me while watching Transport Group's Once Upon a Mattress, which features not one but two wildly miscast stars in Jackie Hoffman and John "Lypsinka" Epperson.

Daring casting is something of a Transport Group tradition, and sometimes it has paid off. Jack Cummings III, the company's artistic director, hired David Greenspan to be the entire company of The Patsy, an obscure, lace-covered parlor comedy from 1925, with results that were thoroughly charming. I didn't see Cummings' revival of I Remember Mama, in which all the characters, including the adolescent protagonist and her younger siblings, were played by actresses over the age of 60, but many reviewers found it enchanting.

And one can see why Cummings decided to gamble on Once Upon a Mattress with Hoffman and Epperson; some kind of shakeup was surely necessary, because nearly 60 years later, the show -- a spoofy retelling of "The Princess and the Pea" -- is firmly, almost indelibly, associated with Carol Burnett. (The role of Princess Winnifred the Woebegone made her a star; it also set the tone for the kind of comedy with which she would convulse television audiences for the next 25 years.) Not only is there a cast album preserving Burnett's performance, she appeared in two television productions. (Actually, three; in 2005, she essayed the role of Queen Aggravain, Winnifred's nemesis, opposite Tracey Ullman; in any case, the lady's fingerprints are all over the material.) The problem was made plain in the 1998 Broadway revival, which starred Sarah Jessica Parker, who was pert, appealing, and, sadly, most definitely not a clown.

For Once Upon a Mattress is an old-fashioned clown show; its authors -- book by Jay Thompson, Dean Fuller, and Marshall Barer; music by Mary Rodgers; lyrics by Barer -- originally wrote it as a sketch at a summer resort, and, even in its expanded version, it has the feel of something cribbed from a mid-century television variety show. (This is a compliment.) The actress playing Winnifred needs to be rowdily amusing, a naturally disruptive presence, and utterly without vanity. (She makes her first appearance soaking wet, having swum the moat to reach the castle where, she hears, there is an available prince.) As Winnifred, Hoffman, who has brought her riotous lack of good will to several Broadway productions, has several things going for her. A solid belter, she easily annihilates the chorus in "Shy," ending with a stage littered with bodies. Given a barbell so heavy no man can lift it, she picks it up and twirls it like a majorette. In the middle of a song, she can slip into a Billie Holiday imitation, because, after all, why not? And when confronted with Aggravain, for whom the Oedipus complex might have been invented (an elaborately wigged and gowned Epperson), her deadpan stare would kill lesser mortals.

But there's no getting around the fact that the role of Winnifred doesn't allow Hoffman to do what she does best. The character is an inversion of a classic fairy-tale princess -- assertive, practical, and two-fisted -- and if Once Upon a Mattress is going to work it's because we're rooting for her to get around the super-possessive Aggravain and land Prince Dauntless (an amusingly schlubby Jason SweetTooth Williams) for herself. She is essentially good-natured, and Hoffman has repeatedly proven that she is most hilarious when dispensing the kind of scorn that withers everything in its presence -- men, women, children, and most forms of plant and animal life. Her default mode is the sneer, her voice a nasal drill that cuts through every kind of nicety or pretense. Unable to flex this comic muscle, she is at a disadvantage; as a result, she moves from gag to gag without trying to build a character whose warmth or winsomeness might win us over. When, at last, she ends up on twenty pillows underneath which has been stashed a single pea, she gets to unleash the kvetching that made her famous. (She even slips in a throwaway line about Ambien -- obviously, not from the original script -- that gets a big laugh. Then again, humor isn't really the problem: She is frequently funny, but, in some odd, yet essential, way, not really present.

A similar problem plagues Epperson, best known for his Lypsinka character, a kind of composite diva who acts out a series of psychodramas while lip-synching to elaborate soundtracks assembled from bits of old Hollywood films, obscure cast albums, television interviews, etc. Aggravain pretends to look for a princess to marry Dauntless, but since she never intends to give him up, she invents increasingly impossible challenges for any young lady who shows up with royal matrimony on her mind. Coiffed like a mid-20th century film goddess, dressed in gowns so elaborate they could clothe the entire company, Epperson enters and offers a gimlet glare that signals aristocratic hauteur to the nth degree. "You swam the moat," she says to Winnifred, doing her best Bette Davis to express Aggravain's skepticism. She also does well by the queen's talking jags, in which she makes clear that she, alone, is the victim in each and every circumstance. (When she complains about "that strange nagging pain in my jaw," we immediately grasp that it is a symptom of overuse.) Epperson also amusingly suggests that Aggravain is unsure of her royal position -- indeed, she is something of a social climber -- by her consistent mispronunciation of both the long and short "a" -- as in "thahnk you" and "pahntry" -- to show off her refined nature.

At the same time, the performer seems to be standing outside of his character, commenting on her rather than really playing her. One never really feels the pull of Aggravain's selfish possessiveness, no matter how often it is put on display. And there are times when the actor reverts to bits of business from his solo shows -- for example, rather showily creeping across the stage, each step reinforced by a knocking sound effect -- that don't feel like they belong here.

The rest of Cummings' production is a collection of hits and misses. Hunter Ryan Herdlicka is an attractive, affable, and pleasantly big-voiced narrator as the Minstrel. Cory Lingner's Jester takes over the stage with a series of leaps and splits in the number "Very Soft Shoes," providing a delightful interlude in a second act that is somewhat overstuffed with secondary matters. And Jessica Fontana has the right satirical attack as Lady Larken, who, by royal decree, cannot marry until Dauntless finds a princess, and who is getting rather nervous about it, since her pregnancy will be showing any minute. On the other hand Zak Resnick sings beautifully but misses the humor of Sir Harry, Larken's clueless lover, never finding a comic style for the character. Jay Rogers, a fine comedian, is wasted in the dull role of the Wizard. And if David Greenspan's mute King benefits from his technically adept use of mime, the character's laughs have surprisingly gone missing.

Sandra Goldmark's skeletal scenic design features a clever and highly original twist in the upstage screen, with video projections, by Andrew Lazarow, that feature backdrops by the scenic illustrator Ken Fallin, many of them drawn in real time. (It's a sophisticated version of the old overhead projectors you may remember from high school days.) But Kathryn Rohe's costumes, except for those for Epperson, are boxy and heavily layered, making them unsuitable for dance numbers. R. Lee Kennedy's lighting is solid, but the sound design, by Walter Trarbach, is wildly overscaled for a small theatre. Rodgers' witty, lighthearted music is often blared at earsplitting levels. Aside from Lingner's lively solo, the choreography, by Scott Rink, tends toward the generic; he never finds a distinct movement vocabulary for these characters.

Hoffman and Epperson are naturally funny people, and I suspect that they are providing enough laughs to satisfy their ardent fans. But the cold truth is, she inhabits one show and he is in another one altogether -- and everyone else is left to fend with Once Upon a Mattress. As it happens, it's not enough to cast a clown show with clowns -- you need the right kind of clowns. -- David Barbour