Into the Woods —aka, the divine, luminous, any-superlative-you-fancy Into the Woods —was the last Encores production to migrate from City Center to Broadway. It was Sondheim buffed to its wittiest, sharpest, most moving sheen, with a pantheon of glorious performances including Julia Lester as a very attitude-y Little Red Ridinghood. In contrast, Once Upon a Mattress (Hudson Theatre, booking to Nov.
30) , the latest show to execute the same hop, skip, and jump to Broadway, is making the journey thanks to the name and standout stage performance of one person: Sutton Foster who plays Princess Winnifred, aka Fred, who not only saves the day on stage but also rescues this puny show from total inconsequentiality. The multi-Tony winning/nominated Foster is a master of physical comedy; if Lucille Ball infamously stomped grapes, Foster here induces paroxysms of laughter by eating and spitting them out, and eventually throwing random things into the first rows of audience in a mini-frenzy that underlines just how not of our world “Fred” is. The 1959 musical, based on Hans Christian Andersen’s The Princess and the Pea —book by Jay Thompson, Marshall Baker, and Dean Fuller; music by Mary Rodgers, lyrics by Marshall Baker—is inoffensively charming, but not compelling; it feels like a fairytale, but without any of Into the Woods ’ brains and guts, just the simplest of notes for minds who wish no demands be made of them.
If Foster’s boldface name (and brilliant acting and .