Madalyn Scullen, left, and Alex Ross get ready in their dressing room. The CrazyLake Acting Company’s cast of Once Upon a Mattress during a recent dress rehershal at the H.J. Ricks Centre. Performances are scheduled for July 8, 9, 10, 15, 16 and 17.
By Elissa Maudlin
GREENFIELD — Christine Schaefer, co-director for “Once Upon a Mattress” at CrazyLake Acting Company, said when she thinks of the show in future years, she’ll think of a few things: the colors, the costumes and the vibrancy of the set.
“People should expect to be absolutely delighted by every aspect of [the show],” she said. “When the curtain opens up and shows our set, it’s just so beautiful and colorful.”
“Once Upon a Mattress” is “a musical retelling” of “The Princess and the Pea,” filled with medieval costumes, colors and 20 mattresses.
The story consists of the queen, who declares no one can marry until her son gets married, and no princess can pass the queen’s tests. When Winnifred the Woebegone comes, she must pass the Sensitivity Test and see if she can marry the prince and help Lady Larken and Sir Henry get married, a press release for the show said.
Noelle Russell plays the queen and said she auditioned for “Once Upon a Mattress” because it was the first musical she did in college and “knew [it] was a light-hearted, whimsical type of show.”
Dressed in a red medieval dress, she jokes that “[her character’s] dress is as hot as [her character’s] temper.” To her, the queen is talkative and likes to make her points known, which makes Russell have to take the extreme points of her personality and turn them up a notch, she said.
“ … the joke I’ve been making is I don’t have to dig too deep to come up with that character,” she said. “So I can laughingly relate to my character.”
Russell said it’s fun to perform this show with some of the audience possibly having familiarity with the show, due to the movies with the same title, and they have added their “own flavor and own twist” on the story.
“ … every time we have rehearsed, every time we have run [the] show, we have found more and more little moments where we interact with our fellow actors and have fun in new ways,” she said.
Schaefer and Studabaker chose “Once Upon a Mattress” because it is “totally family-centered [and] family friendly,” Schaefer said. Some of her favorite parts of co-directing the show is working with kids who she worked with in previous years who are now adults and working with the cast, who she said are “so positive and in such a good mood and nothing gets them down.”
Schaefer, her other co-director Amy Studabaker and the cast have worked for two months on the show and rehearsals have been Monday through Thursday except for holidays.
“We’re really excited to have an audience because we all know there are moments in this show that will result in belly laughs,” Russell said.
Schaefer does the acting/directing work for the show and said working with Studabaker, who does the music and choreography, “is a gift.”
“We’ve really taken what is usually a high school production to another level,” Schaefer said.
Tickets are on sale in advance for $10 at crazylakeacting.com and Hometown Comics and Games in Greenfield, and are $12 at the door. The shows are July 8, 9, 10, 15, 16 and 17. Friday and Saturday shows are at 7:30 p.m. and Sunday shows are at 2:30 p.m. at Rick’s Center for the Arts at 122 W. Main St. in Greenfield.
