Everyone doesn’t spend their summers in the Berkshires. Most of us swelter in our apartments, looking for excuses to go outside, at least when it’s a reasonable temperature. But, our local theater scene (which continues to become more crowded and competitive for audiences during the season) still doesn’t take advantage of this. We really don’t get enough of anything in the summer around here, particularly outdoor theater. I tip my hat to any troupe willing to take on the technical challenges and meteorological risks of an out of doors production. But I don’t find myself doing it very much.
If I’m promised a beer and a breezy evening, I’ll go to the amphitheater at Christian Herter Park to see a theatrical adaptation of an episode of Two and a Half Men. Of course, that doesn’t leave me with a very high standard to apply to the NYC émigré Fully Committed, a telephonic one man show by Becky Mode and featuring Gabriel Kuttner in about forty characters (but I wasn’t counting).
Christina Todesco’s (intentionally) dingy set places us in the claustrophobic basement of a posh and very much in-fashion (Naomi Campbell eats there) restaurant where Sam (Kuttner) spends his days, evenings, and even Christmases on the phone, taking reservations months in advance, fielding calls from embittered patrons, and on the internal phone system. Sam’s callers, along with his co-workers, are all voiced by Kuttner in too many accents to count (mafioso, WASP, gay & fabulous, Midwest, Jewish grandma) and he’s able to switch between them with more dexterity than most would have with a multi-line phone and intercom system. Note that the play doesn’t really take us inside the world of elite Manhattan eateries, but rather straight to the dungeon of one, where Sam works a largely humiliating job that forces him to eat a lot of…well, not haute cuisine.
Of course, reserving helicopters (when an actual helicopter flew over Kuttner cleverly put the current on hold) for his celebrity-chef boss and dealing with pushy B-list celebrity assistants doesn’t fit into Sam’s definition of making it in New York. (Even if it does give him a chance to call the 900 number of his Village Voice personals ad inbox and his agent.) This is only how he pays the bills between call-backs, when they come, which makes this an insider play on two overlapping levels. First, it will carry more weight with anyone who’s ever worked in the restaurant industry and second, it’ll carry even more weight with those that have tried to break into the theater industry. As with most shows of the Boston fringe scene, most of the audience is part of the scene themselves. Which means they’ve probably spent at least a few months in a job like Sam’s, as well as bitten their finger nails over auditions.
Fully Committed pushes Sam lower and lower and, when his comic humiliation culminates in a scatological off-stage scene at the end of the first act, Sam realizes how much power he actually has and becomes something of a motivational figure, particularly to the Actor’s Equity fellow travelers in the audience. He begins to make power plays not unlike those of Kuttner’s Charlie Fox in Speed-the-Plow (at the New Rep last fall) and eases himself into a position of authority through luck, assertiveness, and some underhanded dealings, walking away from what could’ve been another bad day in a bad job a little bit richer, stronger, and happier. So by all means go, enjoy the weather, and get yourself a drink.
Gabriel Kuttner in Fully Committed (Forden Photography)
Fully Committed has been extended through August 29th! Good for summer theater. Plays at The Outdoor Amphitheatre at Christian Herter Park (1175A Soldiers Field Road, Brighton). Tickets are $15 and may be reserved through ix@fullycommittedboston.com. fullycommittedboston.com for more info.
