by Cari Lynn Pace *

Sonoma Arts Live’s season-closing Once Upon a Mattress holds plenty of delights. This Tony-award nominated 1959 musical with a book by Jay Thompson, Dean Fuller & Marshall Barer and lyrics by Barer and music by Mary Rogers runs through August 2.

Based on the ageless fairy tale The Princess and the Pea by Hans Christian Andersen, the show still has 20 mattresses piled up and a single pea underneath, but it’s no longer a children’s story.

Director Larry Williams gathered a cast of fourteen for this musical comedy romp to play characters that are fun caricatures. Beth Ellen Ethridge is magnificently cast as imperious Queen Aggravain. The Queen controls the kingdom and everyone in it. Ethridge is clearly enjoying her chance to play it over the top.

Her meek husband King Sextimus (Jake Russell) says not a word due to a curse. Her hapless and aging son Prince Dauntless (Tim Setzer) begs her to find him a bride. The Queen will allow no other marriages until the Prince is wed, and many princesses apply for the job. The Queen manipulates various tests to the princesses and rejects them all, staying firm in her power.

One brave Knight, Sir Harry (handsome Nate Mercier), is determined to find Prince Dauntless a bride so Harry can marry his lovely Lady Larken (sweet songbird Whitney Isabella). She tells him she is “with child” so he quickly gets going on his quest.

When a bedraggled Princess Winnifred (Daniela Innocenti Beem) shows up from the swamp, the comedy is non-stop. Beem is a Bay Area powerhouse songstress whose comedic timing and facial expressions are the hit of this show. This princess can’t sleep atop the pile of mattresses, and the audience can’t stop laughing.

Once Upon a Mattress is a tour de force of costuming by Adriana Gutierrez, with additional costume support by Barbara McFadden, with particularly dazzling outfits for the Jester (nimble Seana Nicol) and Queen, and finery for the Minstrel (Carly Leahy), Wizard (LC Arisman), and all those Knights.  

Again, this fractured fairy tale show isn’t really intended for children, but all others should succumb to its charm.

Playing through August 2, 2026 on the Rotary Stage at Andrews Hall in the Sonoma Community Center, 276 East Napa Street, Sonoma.

Click HERE for more information and tickets.

Photos by Katie Kelley Photography

Cari Lynn Pace is a long-time Bay Area theatre critic whose reviews were regularly featured in the Marinscope Community Newspapers and a voting member of the San Francisco Bay Area Theatre Critics Circle.