Give "pea" a chance.
With respect to the memory of John Lennon, that's all we are asking.
Based on "The Princess and the Pea," that old warhorse musical, Once Upon a Mattress—whose 1959 Broadway run launched leather-lunged Carol Burnett into the comedy stratosphere—gets a deft and funny refurbishing fit for folks big and small at Spring Mountain Ranch, extending Super Summer Theatre's impressive win streak.
If it feels inescapably retro, undeniably square and hopelessly yesterday—let's settle for "vintage"—by the standards of contemporary Broadway after nearly half a century, at its core it's as charmingly evergreen as a fairy tale can be.
Snatching the handoff from Phil Shelburne's breezy Seussical last month, the Nevada Theatre Company and director Deanna Duplechain retell this tale with a zest sometimes missing from mountings of classics, the spirit steamed out by the familiarity-breeds-contempt trap. No trap doors here. And as Princess Winnifred the Woebegone, Katie Harper executes an outsized star turn that recalls the outrageous Burnett.
Harper is the brash princess who swims the moat to reach the palace where dwelleth King Sextimus—rendered mute by a witch's curse—and his terror of a wife, Queen Aggravain. The queen holds rigged contests to allegedly find the "true princess" to wed her son, Prince Dauntless—whom she is not-so-subtly eager to keep a single mama's boy. However, no one in the kingdom may marry until Dauntless does, unnerving lovers Sir Harry and Lady Larkin, who is, in the terminology of long-ago times, preggers. So off goeth Harry in search of a suitable marital candidate, discovering loud but lovable Princess ... 'Fred. Infuriated, Aggravain concocts a "sensitivity" test involving a pea hidden under 20 mattresses on which 'Fred doth sleepeth.
If there were any rafters to raise at the ranch, Harper would blow 'em off their hinges with the tongue-in-cheeky "I'm Shy," a boom-box-blaster of an entrance, and later show-stopper "Happily Ever After." A bracing stage presence, Harper's a nose-tickling glass of champagne on New Year's, and the fizz never flattens. But Harper and director Duplechain are careful never to let the star lap up all the audience love, leaving enough space for a spate of grand supporting performances.
With her vaudevillian villainy, Kathleen Etor's queen is a robust riot, and as King Sextimus, John Ivanoff's mime exertions are hilarious highlights, approaching Keaton-esque. Mark White creates a warm and likable minstrel, and Dean Bengert is a tart, wily wizard who gleefully conspires with his queen. While Stephen Crandall imbues Sir Harry with amiable pomposity, Leigh Anne Crandall's Lady Larkin anchors him as the piece's most grounded character. And Tony Blosser is an amusingly giggly, gawky Dauntless.
Pacing a genre-spanning score, Suzanne Childers' precise yet exuberant choreography slides seamlessly from balletic and jazzy to soft-shoe and tap. Costume designer William Howard III, in fine fairy-tale fashion, garbs the cast in bold, primary-color tunics, and Richard Sosa's palace set is simple but evocative, allowing for speedy, rolling prop switches.
They all lend bounce to Once Upon a Mattress, a tuneful flight of fancy starring a musical-comedy princess.
Parting is such SEAT sorrow.
This weekend marks at least the temporary end of an eccentric journey when Ernest Hemmings and Francine Gordon (a.k.a. Test Market) close the SEAT venue with Hemmings' fittingly titled original play, The Eccentric. The plot? "A couple on holiday overseas fill out their travelogue with a raunchy game involving a teenage drug addict when, in the middle of the act, the silly tart dies." Expect adult language, nudity and violence.
Hardly Once Upon a Mattress. That's the point. SEAT, whose anemic attendance couldn't support its overhead at the Arts Factory, occupied a vital Vegas niche. If the Little Theatre is the rock of regularity, UNLV the upscale outlet and the Ranch a rustic emblem of family-friendly entertainment, SEAT was the downscale bohemian laboratory—the funky Frankenstein dungeon where odd, offbeat artistic voices could dabble to their often dark hearts' content. And while the duo's frenetic pace yielded as many sloppy seconds as first-rate triumphs on their tiny stage, their passion for theater that challenges and provokes will be sorely missed. We only hope they reappear in a space of their own before long.
Hemmings and Gordon will still perform around Downtown—homeless, yes, but in spirit, this talented twosome will keep the SEAT warm.