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The Encores! Once Upon a Mattress Is the Biggest Summer-Camp Show Ever
Sutton Foster and friends play it really big and really broad for this lively short run.
As Princess Winnifred, practicing for whatever tests the snooty Queen Aggravain may throw at her, she runs circuits around the City Center stage, performing escalating feats of strength (picking up a goofily large prop dumbbell), flexibility (the splits! It wears even by Mattress ’s own second act, where the convolutions of the plot get arcane and the jokes repeat — as impishly delightful as David Patrick Kelly is as the mute king, you can only watch so many lines delivered through charades. The Minstrel and Jester have merged into one, a few more jokes fall on the side of the show’s women, and there are some circular bits of dialogue that make you imagine the characters are strolling around Stars Hollow, but otherwise it’s all very recognizably Mattress, for better and for worse.
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