Is there a job that is less rewarding or appealing than being tethered to a telephone, juggling reservations for the entitled at a sizzling-hot four-star Manhattan eatery? With the exception of cleaning elephant dung, coal mining, or serving as Lindsay Lohan’s attorney, the answer is probably no. The classism, social jockeying, bullying, petty threats, and downright harassment faced by reservations clerk Sam Peliczowski in Becky Mode’s comedy “Fully Committed’’ would push even the strongest man to look more fondly at a career with the bomb squad.
Few reservations about ‘Fully’
At the start of a new production staged al fresco at Christian Herter Park and briskly directed by Steven Barkhimer, we get a view of the put-upon Sam as the Midwestern everyman who has come to New York to pursue a career in acting. But instead of receiving callbacks for Taco Bell commercials, he’s found himself in the dungeon of the city’s restaurant-of-the-moment, serving as telephone ringmaster to patrons who are willing to do nearly anything to get a seat at coveted table 31, or a forkful of the jicama-smoked Scottish wood squab, poached in ginger broth and wrapped in wilted spinach.
Gabriel Kuttner plays Sam like a grounded but sarcastic Jimmy Stewart (minus all “Aw shucks’’ moments), exuding the proper amount of eye rolling and temple rubbing to demonstrate his measured frustration with the likes of status-grubbing Carolyn Rosenstein-Fishberg, or Naomi Campbell’s browbeaten but well-caffeinated assistant Bryce.
Kuttner has the arduous task of playing all of these characters — from the vain, petulant chef with the personality of the Marquis de Sade to the mysteriously despised reservation-seeker Ned Finlay. In fact, Kuttner plays 37 characters for this one-man show. With few pauses, he deliciously sends up these broadly drawn stereotypes of Manhattan’s elite, as well as those who want nothing more than to rub elbows with them. The insecurities are palpable as Kuttner jumps from one character to the next like an actor with multiple personality disorder who has mistakenly stirred methamphetamine into his coffee instead of nondairy creamer.
As originally presented off-Broadway in 1999, this was a one-act play with no intermission. This production adds an intermission, which the audience needs to catch its breath as much as the actor. Propelled by Kuttner’s manic energy, “Fully Committed’’ zips like a professional ping-pong match and reaches a boiling point as Sam faces withering acting jobs, the possibility of missing Christmas with his widowed father, and a particularly disturbing incident in a restaurant powder room that needs cleaning.
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