Mary Rodgers—daughter of Jerome Hart’s and Oscar Hammerstein II’s tunesmith Richard Rodgers, mother of Adam (The Light In The Piazza and Days of Wine and Roses) Guettel—used to position herself as a lesser composer who came along between two geniuses. True, her oeuvre is smaller than theirs, but then, between Freaky Friday, producing Leonard Bernstein’s TV series Young People’s Concerts, and her transformative tenure as chairman of the board of The Juilliard School, Mary (as she was known to everyone) had one or two other things on her plate. Perhaps her most familiar tune is “The Boy From…,” to Stephen Sondheim’s parody lyric for The Mad Show (1966). But her chef d’œuvre is the score for Once Upon A Mattress (1959), with madcap lyrics by Marshall Barer. A sendup of the Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale “The Princess and the Pea,” the Off Broadway hit quickly transferred to Broadway, skyrocketing Carol Burnett to show-biz royalty. The Encores! revival stars Sutton Foster, who needs no such introduction. But a likelier “genuine, certified” Princess “Fred” (for Winnifred) in our time is flatly inconceivable. We can’t wait—but counting the minutes, you could do worse than to read Shy: The Alarmingly Outspoken Memoirs of Mary Rodgers (co-authored with Jesse Green). The lady had tales to tell. —Matthew Gurewitsch