AGAIN UPON THE MATTRESS

posted by James Reel

I’ve spent an inordinate amount of time this morning perusing the 25th-anniversary issue of the Tucson Weekly. There’s a lot of fascinating material there, looking back at the last quarter century of the publication and of Tucson, and even looking ahead. But the main item of interest, of course, is my contribution, which this week is a review of a little show on the east side:

_Once Upon a Mattress_ is remarkable--a second-string musical that somehow holds up much, much better than some other 50-year-old shows. This fractured fairy-tale version of “The Princess and the Pea” is witty, a little cynical and not the least bit dated. It's getting an enjoyable production on Tucson's far eastside by the Da Vinci Players.

Note that the use of “eastside” in that last sentence was imposed by the editor. I would never use a compound word like that as a noun, no matter what the increasingly idiotic AP Style Manual says. “Eastside” is an adjective; “east side” is the noun. “Backyard” and “backseat” are adjectives; “back yard” and “back seat” are the nouns. There can be no argument over this until people start using “frontyard” and “frontseat” as nouns, too.

Anyway, you can read my review here.