A spring musical

If you missed Newport Harbor High School’s production of “Once Upon a Mattress” last month, fear not ? you can see the show again at Costa Mesa High School this week.

And if that one leaves you hankering for more, there’s still hope ? Estancia High School is putting on the musical in June. It will even have the same set and props as the other two productions, courtesy of a U-Haul trailer.

In a remarkable coincidence, three of the four high schools in the Newport-Mesa Unified School District opted to perform the same play this spring. Rather than try to discourage one another, the schools’ drama departments banded together, pooling funds into one elaborate set and making plans to move it around town. As a result, every school saved time and money.

So if anyone out there really loves “Once Upon a Mattress,” welcome to heaven.

“We got together and said, ‘We can’t do it at one school and, next week, do it again,’ ” said Kathy Paladino, the theater director at Costa Mesa High. “But the more we thought about it, we thought, ‘Why not?’ ”

When the three schools’ drama advisors ? Paladino, Gail Brower-Nedler of Newport Harbor and Pauline Maranian of Estancia ? discovered that they were on the same track, they rallied students and parents to work as art directors. Over spring break, the school teams came to the Costa Mesa High theater on alternating days to hammer, saw, paint, glue and create a royal-looking set.

“Once Upon a Mattress,” first performed on Broadway in 1959, is a musical adaptation of the classic fairy tale “The Princess and the Pea.” The story involves a tyrannical queen who imposes a strict test for her son’s bride-to-be: the young lady must be sensitive enough to detect a pea through 20 thick mattresses before she weds the prince.

For the set, the three schools assembled a pair of thrones, a makeshift bed on wheels, castle walls made of painted Styrofoam and paper, even a gold cage for the queen’s pet bird. The crew also had a professional on its side: Gerardo Jimenez, a Newport Harbor parent who works as a designer at Disneyland, supervised the construction.

Jimenez, whose daughter played the queen in the Newport Harbor production, saw the set decoration as an opportunity for the students.

“Mostly, I wanted them to learn, to have the experience to be as creative as possible,” he said.

About 65 students and parents worked on the set. The Newport Harbor team held its production in the Costa Mesa theater ? Newport Harbor’s own stage, located in Robins Hall, is shut for seismic reasons ? but later this month, the schools plan to ship the scenery to Estancia.

While the three takes on “Once Upon a Mattress” were a fluke, it’s not the first time that Newport-Mesa schools have shared a production. Last year, Newport Harbor, Estancia and Corona del Mar High School put on “Seussical the Musical,” transporting the same set.

For “Once Upon a Mattress,” Costa Mesa and Estancia added small touches to the production; Paladino had her students sew banners to drape over the top of the stage, while Maranian ordered extra walls for the sides of the Estancia theater. Brower-Nedler said that far from leading to competition, the matching productions had allowed the three schools to share ideas.

“What was really nice is that the kids from Costa Mesa and Estancia came to see our production, and our kids plan to go see their productions,” she said. “So they’re supporting each other.”dpt.15-mattress-CPhotoInfoIP1QUVHO20060515iz6d7mncKENT TREPTOW / DAILY PILOT(LA)Cast members in the musical “Once Upon a Mattress” gather on the set at Costa Mesa High School. From left is Shantiel Vazquez, 15, Joel Buers, 18, Claudia Campos, 17, Michael Popov, 16, Lauren Hicks, 14, Genesis Rivas, 15, and Cat Tran, 15.