“Once Upon a Mattress,” a one-of-a-kind amalgamation of 1950s musical comedy, fairy tale, and burlesque, will return this week in a new Encores! production at City Center starring Sutton Foster as Princess Winnifred alongside Cheyenne Jackson, Michael Urie, J. Harrison Ghee, Harriet Harris, and Nikki Renée Daniels. It’s worth considering the musical’s one-of-a-kind history.
1835: Hans Christian Anderson, the Danish author of fairy tales such as “The Little Mermaid,” “The Red Shoes,” “The Ugly Duckling,” and “The Emperor’s New Shoes,” writes “The Princess and the Pea,” in which a princess must prove herself worthy of a prince by being able to sense a pea left under twenty mattresses. (The classic version of the fairy tale is depicted through pantomime in the musical’s opening number.)
1958: “Once Upon a Mattress” is first presented as a short, silly piece of evening entertainment for guests at Camp Tamiment, a Poconos resort where future stars such as Neil Simon, Woody Allen, and Jerome Robbins worked early in their careers. Its composer is Mary Rodgers, the daughter of Richard Rodgers (who was still writing with Oscar Hammerstein at the time and at the height of his fame).
1959: Following rewrites, “Once Upon a Mattress” transfers Off-Broadway to the Phoenix Theatre in the East Village (today the site of the Village East Cinema), with an unknown comedienne named Carol Burnett playing Winnifred. It then moves to Broadway, where it plays four different theaters over the course of 460 performances. It competes at the 1960 Tony Awards against “The Sound of Music,” “Fiorello!” and “Gypsy.”
1964: Burnett stars in a black-and-white television adaptation of the musical alongside other original cast members including Jack Gilford as the mute King Sextimus and Jane White as Queen Aggravain. They are joined by Elliott Gould as the Jester.
1972: Burnett stars in another television adaptation (this time in color), once again with Gilford and White. They are joined by Bernadette Peters as Lady Larken. This version was made available on DVD in 2016.
1996: The musical receives its only Broadway revival to date, with Sarah Jessica Parker playing Winifred and Jane Krakowski as Larken. It receives middling reviews and lasts about six months.
2002: Among the innumerable amateur productions of the musical that are staged over the years, yours truly plays the supporting role of the Wizard in a production at Marlboro High School in New Jersey. It does not transfer to Broadway or Off-Broadway.
2005: Burnett stars in a third television adaptation, but this time playing Aggravain, alongside Tracey Ullman, Zooey Deschanel, Tom Smothers, and Matthew Morrison. It is an embarrassment that manages to bring a series of television adaptations of musicals on ABC (which began with the Brandy “Cinderella” in 1997) to an end.
2015: The Transport Group presents an offbeat Off-Broadway revival on the Lower East Side starring loudmouthed comic Jackie Hoffman as Winnifred, drag performer John “Lypsinka” Epperson as Aggravain, and experimental performer David Greenspan as Sextimus.
2023: The musical makes a cameo appearance on the series finale of “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel,” with Leslie Kritzer playing Carol Burnett as she performs the song “Shy” on a guest spot on television, just as Burnett herself did in 1959.
City Center, 131 W. 55th St., nycitycenter.org. Jan. 24 to Feb. 4.
