Also this issue:

Kelly's Girl
John Kelly is a man of many faces -- including Joni Mitchell’s.
-David Warner

Drawing Borders
It's Mural Arts Month, and the Mural Arts Program is celebrating new growth and facing new controversy.
-Ted Mann

Nancy Crow at Snyderman Gallery
Form and function collide in Nancy Crow's quilts.
-Robin Rice

Stan and Jan's Plan
-Debra Auspitz

Word From Your Mtter
-David Warner

Balanchine Favorites at Pennsylvania Ballet
-Janet Anderson

Crowns at McCarter Theatre
-Toby Zinman

Eternal Spiral Project's I Stand Before You Naked
-David Anthony Fox

October 24-30, 2002

theater

Fully Committed at Philadelphia Theatre Co.

by David Anthony Fox

“Fully committed” is restaurant-speak for “no tables available.” And not just any restaurant -- the euphemism is invoked at the kind of fabulously chic and expensive places that popped up all over Manhattan in the ’90s. These are the kingdoms of celebrity chefs like Daniel Boulud and Jean-Georges Vongerichten. They cater to an elite clientele. Mere mortals haven’t a hope of entering. The voice on the phone, answering our presumptuous request for a booking, is specially trained to sound simultaneously apologetic, pitying and disdainful.

Of course, we hate these places (or at least, pretend to hate them) and the people who work there. What could be more fun than a comedy that scorns and ridicules them?

Actually, Fully Committed isn't quite that play. Rather more daringly, it turns the tables, taking instead the side of Sam Peliczowski, the hapless fellow unlucky enough to be working the phone. Sam is a man regularly pummeled by socialites, glitterati, pushy tourists, whiny senior citizens and the occasional Mafioso.

Becky Mode's script gives us all this, using a clever coup-de-theatre. A single actor plays all the roles: Sam and his parade of callers.

Funny idea -- and funny play. Mode has a gift for taking a comic situation and building on it, as when Naomi Campbell's people demand a special vegan tasting menu, the prime table in the house... oh, and by the way, special bulbs for the sconces (the lighting is too harsh). Diverse plot threads are skillfully interwoven, and there's even a hint of pathos in the form of Sam's saintly (and recently widowed) father, who calls hoping his son can visit for Christmas.

But the situation and the writing have their limits, and both are exhausted well before the play's 90-plus minutes are over. By then, we've begun to notice that even the best jokes are hyper-extended, and that really all the characters are little more than stereotypes.

Ultimately, Fully Committed stands or falls on the virtuosity of its leading actor. At PTC, Kraig Swartz is very good at some of the characters, less so at others. Ironically, he's weakest playing Sam himself, who comes off as too much the guileless rube -- there's no way that guy would be hired to work at this restaurant.

You'll certainly find Fully Committed an entertaining way to pass the time. But as for whether it's more than that... well, you might say that I have reservations.