"ONCE UPON A MATTRESS" & "DAYS OF WINE AND ROSES:" Mother and Son
I first met Mary Rodgers 26 years ago this month in the conference room at some theatrically-connected law firm where we’d assembled to hash out recipients for the then-brand-new Jonathan Larson Performing Arts Foundation awards. Jonathan was but two years gone, and anything attached to his name still felt bloody painful. Mary cut right through all of that, dropping down directly opposite me at the long table and introducing herself, straight up, in her sandpaper-sweet ex-smoker’s voice. “Who are you?” she then added, importunately, but not impolitely.
Mary was, at that time, chairwoman of the Juilliard School board of trustees, which I would only learn later. She was also Richard Rodgers’ daughter, which she did not need to tell me. I knew Mary Rodgers was herself a composer, with her own hit Broadway musical, in 1959, Once Upon a Mattress.
Seeing Mattress revived sublimely at City Center’s Encores! series recently brought Mary forcefully back to me.
She was, in her own unsweetened way, the very embodiment of Princess Winnifred, Once Upon a Mattress’s unapologetically unstoppable heroine, who swims the castle moat out of sheer impatience and proves to be a true princess despite her utter disinterest in playing to regal, royal stereotypes.
Mary Rodgers was, let’s face it, a princess of musical theater royalty, who both chafed at the expectations inherent in her rank, and basked in its perquisites. That first day, as we appraised musicals submitted by promising, and largely unknown, young talents, our friendship blossomed in direct proportion to our passionately held opinions. Alongside our fellow judges — composer Stephen Schwartz (who had not yet even conceived his future musical, Wicked) and actor just-then-turning-director Joe Mantello (who would eventually direct Wicked) — we argued and haggled about our favorites, shouting down those we deemed inferior. At the end of a long day, Mary threw her arms around me in ornery fraternity and pretty much never let me go.
Once Upon a Mattress, an impertinent adaptation of Hans Christian Andersen’s Princess and the Pea fable, originally introduced a young and virtually unknown comedic powerhouse named Carol Burnett to Broadway as Princess “Fred.” Her over-the-top essence was replicated at Encores! by the always effervescent Sutton Foster, delivering a Fred so deliciously, rambunctiously “butch” I wouldn’t have been surprised if she’d pursued lady-in-waiting Lady Larken as her future husband (a role beautifully sung at Encores! by Nikki Renée Daniels), instead of the woefully un-redoubtable Prince Dauntless the Drab (played to hilarious perfection by Michael Urie).
In our friendship, Mary proved terrifically Winnifred-like — which is to say: all-out. I imagine this matched the caliber and intensity of her many, many friendships of far deeper and longer standing with such immortals as Leonard Bernstein (for whom she once worked as an assistant), and Stephen Sondheim, the self-acknowledged, platonic “love of her life.” Friends are a big part of Mary’s posthumously-published 2022 memoir entitled: Shy (after Mattress’s big hit song). Shy was well-received, as you may have heard. The book is certainly worth reading, capturing Mary’s effusively self-lacerating manner of speaking and characteristic candor. What’s largely missing, though, is her overwhelming, loving, kindness.
When my first child was born, Mary literally was the first person, beyond immediate family, to turn up at our door; bearing gifts, and snacks for all. Near the end of her life (this year will be the 10th anniversary of her passing, I just realized), Mary was so determined to have my children and her children and grandchildren meet, before Mary was gone, that she hosted an elaborate brunch for this purpose at her capacious apartment in the Beresford on Central Park West. Despite being exceedingly debilitated by illness — as was her much-diminished but still adoring husband, Hank Guettel — Mary treated us not merely to a brunch feast, but to an elaborate scavenger hunt, plotted and staged down to the last cleverly quizzical printed clue and surreptitiously secreted object. She paired us off in teams — one grownup and one child each — strategically divvied up for maximum family mix: my two daughters, Lea and Sara; Mary’s son, Alec, and his wife and their two kids; along with Alec’s brother, Adam, and his then-girlfriend. We fanned out, crawling and sprawling across that vast apartment, feverishly hunting. In the end, Sara’s team won, spotting the final item hiding in plain sight: a folded nylon stocking balanced on one curved foot of Richard Rodgers’ Steinway grand in the middle of the living room. I cannot for the life of me recall what the clue was.
In a wistful twist of fate, I saw Once Upon a Mattress at Encores! the same week I also caught Mary’s son, Adam Guettel’s, Days of Wine and Roses just before it opened, or rather re-opened, on Broadway. I’ve already raved HERE about Days of Wine and Roses; I was knocked out by it a year or so ago when it debuted Off Broadway. The show has been streamlined elegantly for Broadway, but it is still ineradicably itself: a terrifying rendering of two lives and loves destroyed by addiction, set to music of otherworldly beauty by Adam Guettel, sung with breathtaking vulnerability and virtuosity by Kelli O’Hara and Brian d’Arcy James.
Two different musicals. Mother and son. Both blessed with the Rodgers family genius gene, (though Mary always adamantly denied this, as it touched upon her), each divergent diametrically in how they gave voice to their genius. Once Upon a Mattress remains a lighter-than-air romp, with a quick biting wit. Days of Wine and Roses is a sonorous descent into the abyss, an exquisite voyage to oblivion. Mary, who was always her son’s biggest fan, would have appreciated Days of Wine and Roses, I think; though with Mary nothing ever was certain. I bet we would have enjoyed kicking it around.