Old Friends, New Stage Tricks
Performers
Songwriters
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“The moment I saw Jackie onstage in a David Sedaris play at La Mama in the ’90s, I jumped out of my seat and said, ‘Who is that?!’ recalls Epperson. “Ever since then, I’m always fantasizing about doing shows with Jackie. We’re good foils for one another.”
In the early ’00s, the duo appeared together in a series of TWEED TheaterWorks Fractured Classicks, irreverent, over-the-top, often one-night-only stage parodies of famous old films, notably Imitation of Imitation of Life, in which Hoffman brought down the house crooning tweaked lyrics to the obscure song “If You Don’t See What You Want Up Here”: “I may not be the girl of your dreams, but at least I’m singing with my own voice!”
“That was my idea,” says Epperson and Hoffman snorts. “He takes credit for everything! Everything good in Once Upon a Mattress is John’s idea so you can just print that and end the interview now.”
All joking aside, this revival was Epperson’s brainchild and something he had long dreamed of doing. “I first saw Carol Burnett do it on TV in 1964,” he remembers. “Then my first year at college, there was an announcement for the annual school musical: Once Upon a Mattress. I hadn’t been in a show since grammar school and I was very frightened. But I went to the audition and got cast as Sir Studley. It was the first time I discovered I could be funny onstage so I never forgot about the show. Over the years, I thought I could play Winnifred but as I got older, I thought, well, maybe now I could play the Queen. Then when Carol played the Queen on TV in 2005, I decided to take the bull by the horns. I thought, who is the new millennium version of Carol Burnett? My pal Jackie Hoffman.”
Epperson asked Hoffman to do a reading of the musical and invited Transport Group artistic director Jack Cummings III to watch. Though he couldn’t make it, he was intrigued, and in 2013 he called Epperson to ask if the two would be willing to do a concert reading of Mattress as a benefit for the company.
“So we did it and [late composer] Mary Rodgers came and said, ‘I want a full production,'” says Epperson. “And that brought us to today.” Adds Hoffman, “She shepped a lot of nachas from that concert.”
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“It’s such an old-fashioned piece and has an innocence to it despite some sexual innuendo,” says Hoffman. “We’re bringing old-world charm back. It reminds me of On the Town, which is all about people wanting to get laid. That drives this show too.”
While Mattress is playing on the Lower East Side and includes other downtown luminaries like Jay Rogers (Whoop-Dee-Doo!) and multi-Obie Award-winner David Greenspan, Epperson and Hoffman don’t exactly see this production as a return to their roots.
“I have a lot of problems with the perception of ‘downtown theatre,'” says Epperson. “Agreed!” Hoffman interrupts. “When most people hear ‘downtown theatre,’ they think about Karen Finley shoving a yam in her rectum, not this.” Epperson continues, “If you get labeled as something gay or camp or downtown, it can be very limiting.” As this production demonstrates, however, a ‘downtown’ sensibility can stay true to itself while reaching people from every part of the city.
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Photos by Carol Rosegg.
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RAVEN SNOOK