Photography Mark J Chalifoux.
Fully Committed is the solo comedy by Becky Mode currently playing in a Teatro Live! production at the Varscona Theatre, directed by Farren Timoteo.
Andrew MacDonald-Smith plays Sam, the overworked reservation-booker at an exclusive Manhattan restaurant. The 90-minute performance covers one long December shift. Sam arrives late morning to ringing phones and crises in progress. His colleague hasn’t shown up for work, he pesters the kitchen for a staff meal, the chef and the maître d’ are refusing to take calls, he’s hoping for a callback on a theatre audition, his recently-widowed father is pressuring him to come home to Indiana for Christmas … and patrons keep calling and calling and calling, hoping for bookings, asking for changes, and complaining. The whole play is Sam on the phones – but Andrew MacDonald-Smith also plays everyone he talks to on the phone. With shifts in body and voice and accent, he creates the other side of every conversation, dozens of different characters.
Fully Committed is like an epistolary novel, or a media-fic told in text messages and Facebook chats. At first each little conversation just seems like an illustration of how Sam can’t get a moment to breathe, between the intercom with the host stand and kitchen, the hotline to the chef’s office, the headset he takes reservation calls on, and his personal cell. But like the best epistolary novels, the plot builds up from the individual calls, and many of the individuals call back. On opening night, the Varscona audience started out quiet, but then began to laugh more as they recognized some of the frequent callers.
Photography Mark J Chalifoux.
The set design, by Chantel Fortin, was brilliant. She took advantage of the high ceilings in the Varscona to create the impression of a crowded low-ceilinged basement room, with a staircase ascending at upstage centre, heating ducts over the main workspace, and ceiling beams off to the side reminiscent of those used in Autumn, as well as lots of appropriate clutter on shelving and desks. Sam uses the whole playing space energetically, with help from a wheeled office chair, even running up the stairs with a mop bucket to deal with an issue nobody else will tackle. Lighting design by Skye Grinde ensures that the office feels like a too-small too-full basement, but it is never too dark for the audience to get a sense of Sam’s environment and to see all the characters he talks to on the phone.
I saw a production of Fully Committed at Central Alberta Theatre (Red Deer) in 2022, with Ash Mercia playing the title role. So I wasn’t surprised by the character or the storyline. But Andrew MacDonald-Smith is a great fit as Sam, competent but underappreciated at this job while struggling with the rest of his life, and hilarious when he shifts to the other larger-than-life characters, from Chef and Jean-Claude the maître d’ to patrons like Carol Ann Rosenstein-Fishburn, Bryce the assistant to Gwynyth Paltrow, and the one who keeps reminding him that she’s a Senior Citizen. Interestingly, while I was engaged with watching Sam struggle to satisfy any of the people ringing him on multiple lines spread out around the stage, I forgot that the actor is tall, because Sam is so weighed down all day.
The performance runs just under 90 minutes. Resolution of many of the plot threads happens in satisfying ways that aren’t telegraphed ahead of time, but it’s still a slice-of-life reminder of the back-of-house lives unseen behind a pretentious and successful establishment. It’s very funny and it’s charming, a portfolio of ridiculousness for MacDonald-Smith and a tongue-in-cheek skewering of foodie culture, a good fit for the Teatro Live! season.
Fully Committed runs until June 21st, and it’s not fully committed (not sold out)! You can get tickets here.
Ephemeral Pleasures 