![]() ![]() Items like “edible dirt” or “smoked cuttlefish risotto in a cloud of dry ice infused with pipe tobacco” sound like a spot-on satire of Easton’s satire. Even the outrageously satirical ingredients of the restaurant’s haute cuisine bring to mind the unheard of (for us hoi polloi) items delicately scarfed down with Bellinis at Easton's Dorsia and other restaurants. And then there’s poor old Dad, recently widowed, who calls from Ohio hoping against hope that Sam will make it to his empty home for Christmas.In Becky Mode’s one-man play, Fully Committed, the fresh-faced, red-haired and bearded comic actor Jesse Tyler Ferguson, one-half of the gay couple on TV’s hit sitcom “Modern Family,” plays-among many other roles-Sam, a reservations clerk at “a world-renowned, ridiculously red-hot Manhattan restaurant.” The first thing that came to mind as I watched him field a nonstop barrage of phone calls seeking impossible-to-get tables at his unnamed bistro was Dorsia, the fictional, super-exclusive eatery that wealthy serial killer Patrick Bateman hungers to get into in Bret Easton Ellis’s 1991 satire on American consumerism, American Psycho, now a Broadway musical. To rub it in, his agent tells him he just doesn’t have the cojones for the roles he’s been going up for. In between the reservation calls, the phone lines also light up with news that Sam’s best frenemy has a callback for a role at Lincoln Center. The playwright has taken care to make him a credible character and give him a plausible life as a would-be actor (that is, if the life of any struggling New York actor could be thought plausible). ![]() And when the house phones ring, he also has to deal with the narcissistic chef, the prima donna maitre d’, and other self-important superiors quick to take advantage of his good nature.īut Sam is more than the doofus in a sitcom. (There’s no clear value to the overdressed set, but those ugly pipes are a nice touch.) Down here, in the bowels of the building, Sam goes mano a mano with all those whining, belligerent, and otherwise insufferable patrons demanding royal treatment. Sam (Ferguson), who shares a basement cranny with the building’s plumbing system, is working the phone bank on his own today. The cuisine at this chic place has also changed from “global fusion” to “molecular gastronomy.” Appetizers now include “frozen polenta with honey mastic,” and main dishes run to “crispy deer lichen atop a slowly deflating, scent-filled pillow dusted with edible dirt.” As is Helen Mirren, whom the chef pronounces “hot.” But Gwyneth Paltrow, who orders a “locally-sourced, no-fat, no-salt, no-dairy, no-sugar, no-chicken, no-meat, no-fish, no-soy, no-rice, no-foam, no-corn tasting menu” for 15 people - is a great substitute. References to once powerful movers and shakers like Sherry Lansing and Naomi Campbell are out. There have been some smart nips and tucks to freshen up the material - although not to the point of acknowledging the existence of the Internet. Without bringing anything special to the role of the beleaguered reservations clerk, Ferguson’s performance should remind the industry why this clever trifle is among the ten most-produced plays in the country. The 1999 play opened Off Broadway with Mark Setlock, who also collaborated in creating the play’s various colorful if unseen characters. Jesse Tyler Ferguson, the star of ABC’s “ Modern Family,” takes his shot at “Fully Committed,” Becky Mode’s tour-de-force-for-solo-actor about the travails of a booking agent on the reservations desk at a trendy Manhattan restaurant.
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