Commit to seeing Fully Committed at Theatre Three today:

Hysterical one-man show will keep you laughing all night long

Lisa Napell Dicksteen

Originally appeared in Times Beacon Record Newspapers

We were not at all sure what to expect when we arrived at Theatre Three for the opening of Fully Committed on January 13. The picture on the front of the playbill shows a man with phones in both hands and cords everywhere, a look of extreme frustration on his face. Could be funny…

Oh my goodness! Funny is an understatement. The full first-night house was convulsed with laughter for 90 minutes, pausing only occasionally to track the poignant moments when Sam (Scott Hofer) chatted with his dad and tried to arrange to get home to South Bend, Indiana to see him for Christmas.

All the action takes place in the basement of a popular upper east side restaurant in early December where Sam is holding down the fort alone, and hoping his late-and-getting-later fellow reservationist, Bob, will get to work soon so he can leave the phones long enough to at least use the bathroom. In the meantime, the phones ring, and ring, and ring, and each time he answers one the caller has another type of attitude, problem, issue, or concern. And then there’s the communication on the intercom (which buzzes) from the hostess at the front of the house, the line cooks in the kitchen, the maitre d’hotel, and the manager, and the special red-line phone used only by the chef from within the restaurant. The latter requires poor Sam to jump up from his table workspace and sprint across the stage to answer it—and it’s never anything good.

Watching Hofer create the voices, facial expressions, and gestures of the dozens of characters who communicate with him, one is struck by a sense of complete awe—that is, when one is not trying not to fall out of one’s seat from laughing. The incredibly versatile Hofer has performed at Theatre Three many times in the past, most recently as an actor in Lend me a Tenor and as the director of Run for Your Wife, but this show is something completely different.

For most of the evening I wrote absolutely nothing in my little notebook. I was either mesmerized by the constant stream of fascinating patter as Hofer morphed from arrogant chef to impatient society matron, to excitable superstar’s assistant, to overworked line cook, to assistant to the emir of a Kuwait, to his own laid-back father and his fellow-actor friend who calls to gloat about callbacks under the guise of “honesty” within their friendship.

Fully Committed, which one learns quickly means “all booked up,” was created by Becky Mode in collaboration with actor Mark Setlock, who performed the first Off-Broadway productions to great critical and popular approval in 1999. He’d had a job similar to Sam’s as a struggling young actor and recalled that one celebrity had asked him to “cut the stamens off every flower in [the] restaurant because his wife was allergic to pollen.” For many of the callers in Fully Committed, this type of request is standard – they are important and rich and expect their every whim to be handled with alacrity.

While the self-important and self indulgent callers faces, voices, and attitudes are precisely perfect, the expressions that come across the face of the young man from the heartland (seeming to be involuntary reactions to some of the things he hears) are occasionally heart breaking. Sam’s warm but un-effusive relationship with his father is revealed through snatches of conversation with his father and brother, stolen between calls from the ranting, condescending chef and the incessant ringing of the reservation line. There have been important changes in the structure of their family over the past year, and he’d really like to know if he’s going to have Christmas off or not so he can fly home to be with his dad who wouldn’t pressure him if his life depended on it, but who’d clearly like to have him home for the holiday.

When a chance to get a table for someone who’s connected to someone involved with an audition he’s hoping to hear back on opens a door to the type of personal connection he’s never dreamed of having appears the struggle between his natural honesty and integrity and his knowledge that this harmless little “alteration” will help him get out of the basement and onto the stage is clear on his face. The results change the tenor of the remainder of the story – I won’t tell you how, you’ll have to go and see for yourself.

The stage set (by Randall Parsons) is perfect, by the way. Sam enters by coming down a flight of wooden steps of the type that typically lead to unfinished basements – which is exactly what’s set up on the stage. There are file cabinets and boxes, and the paraphernalia and detritus of the running of a restaurant scattered around the walls surrounding a large kitchen-style table covered with phones and papers. This is Sam’s command center and the first thing you notice. The second thing you see are signs stuck to various surfaces reminding whoever is answering the phones not to ever take a reservation for Ned Finlay. One wonders what’s up with that. (Another thing I won’t be telling you, sorry. Better make those reservations soon.)

Beat the mid-winter grays with a trip to the scruffy basement of a fancy restaurant? Yup, it doesn’t sound like much of a locale, but, the company is ideal and there’s no better way to warm up the winter than with laughter in the company of friends.

By the way, when you call the reservationist at the Theatre Three box office for your tickets to see Fully Committed, you will receive prompt and courteous attention worthy of our friend Sam, and I’m sure you will offer the same. For a look at how funny those who behave otherwise can be as long as they are not torturing you, go see Fully Committed right away.

Fully Committed will be at Theatre Three through February 10. Tickets are $28 for Saturday evenings, $23 for Friday evenings, and $21 for all other performances. For reservations, group discounts, and more information, call the box office (928-9100) or go to www.theatrethree.com.