“Someone who looks like me.” “If you can see it, you can be it.” Who would have thought Sutton Foster would ever have needed the kind of boost encoded in our current D.E.I. catchphrases? This, for the record, is the Broadway baby with the brassy pipes, the killer taps, and the feather-light comic touch—not to forget a best-actress-in-a-musical nomination for every day of the week. That’s right, seven so far, with wins for Thoroughly Modern Millie and Anything Goes. But check her out in the video teaser for the all-too-brief Encores! revival of Once upon a Mattress, wrapping up tomorrow at New York City Center. Buoyed sky-high on its infectious, 24-karat song list—music by Mary Rodgers, lyrics by Marshall Barer—this is the hit that shot Carol Burnett out of a cannon in 1959.
“I grew up watching The Carol Burnett Show,” Foster bubbles. “It was the first time I felt like I saw myself on TV. A tall, funny, goofy lady who could sing and dance and act and wasn’t afraid to be a fool. And I was like, ‘I want to do that.’” A fairy godmother was listening and came through in spades, as that septet of Tony nominations suggests. Among the portraits in Foster’s rogues’ gallery: Jo in Little Women, Princess Fiona in Shrek, Marian the librarian in The Music Man.And now, a second princess—Winnifred, known as “Fred,” irrepressible yet “shy” as only Burnett ever was shy—based on the heroine of the Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale “The Princess and the Pea.”
