If “Cats” can be turned into a show about drag balls, why not make “Once Upon a Mattress” a nonbinary love story? All that really needs to be done is change the “his” and “her” pronouns to “they” and “their.” Otherwise, most of the work has already been done: Princess Winnifred is a weight-lifter who likes to shorten her name to Fred. And the character’s big love interest is Prince Dauntless, who’s a beta boy with a controlling mother, Queen Aggravain.
In the current listless Broadway revival of “Mattress,” which opened Monday at the Hudson Theatre, director Lear deBessonet makes the unfortunate mistake of having the prince (Michael Urie) perform the role-assignment task of carrying the sleeping princess (Sutton Foster) across the stage.