Loveland High School to debut ‘Once Upon A Mattress’ Friday
Spring musical faces delay due to school closure Thursday
Loveland High School will debut its spring musical, “Once Upon A Mattress,” Friday evening, after a snow day Thursday canceled what would have been the drama department’s premiere that night.
“Once Upon A Mattress,” a musical comedy based on Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tale “The Princess and the Pea,” the story follows an overbearing Queen Aggravain who has decreed that nobody in her realm shall marry until after her son, Prince Dauntless, does. But Aggravain routinely devises absurd tests of worthiness for all of her son’s suitors, turning them all away. Winnifred the Woebegone is finally confronted with the famous test of a pea under an enormous pile of mattresses as the plot reaches its climax.
“The story that’s most commonly told is that this princess shows up at a castle, she’s put to this test to feel this pea, and then they get married, it’s a ‘no hiccups’ kind of thing,” said senior Mason Braggins, who plays The Minstrel, the play’s narrator and a major driver of the plot, after a performance for local middle schoolers Wednesday afternoon. “But in this version of the story there are a lot more challenges to Princess Winnifred marrying Dauntless. There’s a lot more and it adds a lot more to the story.”
Part of what made the show so appealing, said Braggins and two of his costars, seniors Zoe Hale, who plays Queen Aggravain, and Kaylee Howard, who plays Lady H, is the costumes.
“I’ve got this beautiful ball gown, this giant crown and these giant red lips really helped me embody this deranged character, it really, really helped me,” Hale said.
Hale and Howard both said that the elaborate dresses their characters wore, meant to evoke those of nobility in a medieval setting, were invaluable for embodying the poise and posture their characters possessed.
“You can actually feel the character, which is really helpful,” Howard said.
The show was chosen, according to assistant director Karen Bieser, to provide a balance for students and audiences. In the fall the drama department performed “Radium Girls,” a harrowing tale about young women during World War I who contracted debilitating illnesses and died young while working to paint clock faces with radioactive glowing paint, so a lighter piece was preferable for the musical, Bieser said.
Other than one-act plays, which happen later in the school year, this is the final performance for the senior class at LHS.
“I’ve loved theater for a really long time,” Braggins said. “I didn’t have an outlet to do that in middle school … theater for me has been an awesome opportunity for me. I’ve always been an outgoing person, and it’s just another way to present myself, you know? I love being the minstrel, because it’s just a way to be myself in a more dramatic way.”