Starring Carol Burnett, Ken Berry, Jane White, and Wally Cox
Directed by Ron Field and Dave Powers
Music by Mary Rodgers; Lyrics by Marshall Barer
The 2005 Disney rendition of this show was far from the first time it was adapted for the small screen. The star of the original Broadway hit Carol Burnett appeared in two versions in 1964 and 1972. Along with White and Jack Gilford, who also appeared with her in the original Broadway cast, we have TV sitcom vets Cox and Ken Berry and then-hot stage ingenue Bernadette Peters in a wacky retelling of the Hans Christian Andersen story The Princess and the Pea. How nutty does this one get? Let's begin with Carol as she tells her daughter the fairy tale as a bedtime story and find out...
The Story: Prince Dauntless the Drab (Berry) wants to find a bride, but his controlling mother Queen Aggravain (White) gives every prospective princess a series of impossible tests that scares them off. No one in the kingdom can marry until Dauntless does. This is a problem for Lady Larkin (Bernadette Peters) and her knight suitor Sir Harry (Ron Husmann). They've had a...little indiscretion...and she's now expecting. King Sextimus (Gilford) can't do anything either, as he's under a curse that won't allow him to speak until "the mouse devours the hawk."
Harry goes in search of a bride who can pass the tests and comes up with Princess Winifred (Burnett), who swims the moat to get in the castle. Call her "Fred." Fred is loud, brash, and has more energy than everyone else in the castle put together. Aggravain immediately hates her, but Dauntless wants to marry her. The queen devises a test that would have Fred feel a single pea under twenty mattresses. Larkin, Harry, and the Jester (Cox) lend a hand to make sure Fred will feel that darn pea no matter what!
The Song and Dance: No wonder Burnett loved this so much, she played Fred twice. She's got energy to spare and has some great routines, including her attempts to sleep on that towering bed. Berry is an adorably awkward Dauntless, Cox gets some of the best lines as the deadpan Jester who sees all and knows all, and Peters is hilarious as the sweet noblewoman with a big problem and a clueless boyfriend. The bright sets give the show the look of a pop-up storybook, and the colorful Bob Mackie costumes mix every color in the rainbow with total abandon.
Favorite Number: We open with Burnett singing "Many Moons Ago" as she tells the idealized picture book version of the story to her daughter. "An Opening for a Princess" gives us the actual version as Cox explains what's going on and we see the tests and learn Harry and Larkin's situation. Harry and Larkin admit that they'll be having an addition to the family "In a Little While." Princess Winifred tells everyone about "The Swamps of Home" when she arrives. She can out-dance the entire court, including the Queen and Prince, in "The Polish Panic."
The Queen's ladies-in-waiting chant that the Queen wants "Quiet," when she's hardly quiet herself. While studying for her Princess Test, Fred laments that her "Happily Ever After" is a lot harder than for most fairy-tale heroines. Dauntless and his father have a "Man to Man Talk," or mime, about what Dauntless should expect on his wedding night. Harry and Larkin reprise "In a Little While" when they intend to run away. We end with the cast singing "An Opening for a Princess" as Dauntless carries the very worn-out Fred to their bed.
Trivia: The stage version started off-Broadway in May 1959, but moved uptown later that year. It played for over a year, until Burnett left the show. The 1960 London production with Jane Connell expired after three weeks. A Broadway revival in 2005 with Sarah Jessica Parker barely ran five months. Last month's Encores concert with Sutton Foster as Fred and Cheyenne Jackson as Dauntless seems to have been better received.
What I Don't Like: Once again, a lot was revised and eliminated from the Broadway version. Most of the Minstrel's exposition role went to Cox and to Lyle Waggoner as a nobleman the Queen is trying to seduce. Among the songs lost were the cute but extraneous "Very Soft Shoes," "Normandy" for Larkin, the Queen's "Sensitivity," and two more duets for Larkin and Harry, "Song of Love" and "Yesterday I Loved You." Oh, and if you don't like Burnett or her broad style of comedy, forget it. Also, I kind of wish we could have returned to the bedtime story prologue in the finale, if only to hear the kid's reaction to Burnett claiming that was the real story.
The Big Finale: If you love Burnett, her show, or the wacky sitcoms of the late 60's and early 70's, you'll probably get a very big kick out of this satirical take on fairy tales.
Home Media: This can currently be found as an extra on the DVD Carol + 2: The Original Queens of Comedy, a 1966 Burnett special that also includes Lucille Ball and Zero Mostel. It's also on YouTube (along with the long-lost 1964 version).
No comments:
Post a Comment