Summary
This musical comedy serves as a farcical retelling of the fairy tale “The Princess and the Pea.” In a medieval kingdom ruled by a tyrannical queen, no one is allowed to marry until her son, Prince Dauntless, finds a suitable wife—a feat the queen prevents by subjecting every candidate to an impossible test. The entire court’s future rests on the arrival of the unrefined but charming Princess Winnifred, who must prove her royal sensitivity by detecting a single pea hidden beneath twenty mattresses.
Saturday, August 2, 2025 at 3:00 PM Aug 2, 2025, 3:00 PM
Super cute community production of “Once Upon a Mattress” in north central Minnesota, where they have a little volunteer company that puts on one show a year. What was particularly fun about this is that it was completely apparent from every part of the show—the acting, the staging, the blocking, the choreo, the costumes—that they were working from a bootleg of the recent Broadway production. Resourceful! And they did a great job with it. (The lead, a rising senior in neuroscience at UM-Duluth, was doing an uncanny Sutton impression: line reads, mannerisms, and all.) I can’t imagine anyone else noticed, so it felt like a little in-joke between me and them. Me and my parents had a great time.