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From Lauryn Axelrod, Resident Dramaturg
Welcome backstage at the Weston Playhouse Theatre Company with our new online StageNotes. Enrich and expand your WPTC experience as you explore the history of the play, read interviews, watch videos or hear music clips, discover connections and contexts, and learn about the playwrights, composers, directors, actors and designers who make your WPTC live theatre experience so memorable. Enjoy the show! |
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OVERVIEW
An hilarious one-man tour de force about the swarm of people desperate to book a table at New York's hottest French restaurant, and the unemployed actor who has to deal with them all. Weston favorite Sam Lloyd Jr. (SCRUBS) plays Sam, a harried reservationist, and more than 36 other high-energy characters from scheming socialites and name-dropping wannabes to fickle celebrities and egomaniacal bosses in this delicious 70-minute romp through Manhattan’s culinary pretentions and promises. |
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ABOUT THE PLAY & PLAYWRIGHT
Fully Committed was written by Becky Mode “based on characters developed” together with Mark Setlock, who created the role of Sam and whose experiences working in restaurants beside the playwright inspired the play.
The two met in the early 1990s, when they were students at the American Repertory Theatre Institute in Cambridge, MA. They kept in touch after moving to New York to pursue acting careers.
For many years, Ms. Mode talked about writing a restaurant play because she had worked in so many – from the casual to the hottest of the hot. “Each place I worked had its own culture, its own following, its own logic,” she said. “I remember sitting with a group of waiters one day and thinking, ‘there’s comedy in this.’ A restaurant is good place for stories and character and to look at people. It’s a pretty rich environment when it’s not torturing you.” |
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Playwright Becky Mode and
Actor Mark Setlock |
In New York, Mr. Setlock had a job fielding calls at Bouley – the TriBeCa restaurant operated by David Bouley. When Ms. Mode also joined their staff, exchanging funny and frustrating restaurant stories became their daily conversation.
Fully Committed started out as a series of improvisations which Ms. Mode tape-recorded in her Brooklyn living room. The two came up with archetypes – the Southern executive, an upper East Side grand dame – for example. Eventually, the playwright would give a Setlock, who has a talent for imitation, a character and say, “Could you come up with a voice like this?” She insists, however, that the characters in the play are pure invention.
The first in-house reading of Fully Committed was in early 1997. In April of that year, Ms. Mode and Mr. Setlock had a public reading and invited director Nicholas Martin (Huntington Stage, Williamstown Theatre Festival). Mr. Martin agreed to direct and the play found its way to New York’s Vineyard Theatre in 1999, where it was an immediate success. After a sold-out run, the show reopened off-Broadway at the Cherry Lane in December 1999, and was hailed by Entertainment Weekly as “the hottest show in town.” Since then, it has played in numerous regional theatres around the country to resounding success. |
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Chefs, waiters and restaurant critics have found the play to be especially savory. And in the era of Food Network celebrity chefs, behind the scenes culinary exposés, and an increasingly hyperactive food and restaurant culture where getting a table at a “fully committed” restaurant is even more challenging, the play’s point-on satire remains belly-achingly accurate.
BECKY MODE is now a writer with credits at HBO (A Little Curious), Disney (Out of the Box, PB & J Otter), Nickelodeon (Little Bill), and ABC (Born in Brooklyn). She was a staff writer on Cosby at CBS and co-wrote a remake of Cactus Flower for Columbia Pictures. |
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DIRECTOR’S NOTE
Anyone who has worked a dreary day job while dreaming of a different career can connect with poor Sam Peliczowski, the harried reservationist in Fully Committed. Manning a bank of constantly ringing phones at the busiest season of the year, Sam simultaneously strives for a life on Broadway while befriending his widowed father, juggling some overdue bills, and searching for a girlfriend. Add to that the fact that the actor playing Sam also plays the close to 40 people who call him over the course of 70 fast-paced minutes, and you have some memorable theatre.
Funny and virtuosic as it is, Fully Committed is also about something deeply human: the need to gain control of one’s life. We join Sam on his sometimes hilarious, sometimes horrific journey because we want to see him grow up, break out and move on. The play was based on the real life experiences of the playwright and original actor who worked together in a posh Manhattan eatery, and they understand the impulse behind that life struggle.
It was a joy to bring this play to life with the daffily talented Sam Lloyd, Jr. six years ago in the intimacy of the Vermont
Country Store’s Bryant House pub, where we played to a consistently packed house of 35 for its 3-week run. We consider it a gift to revisit Fully Committed now on the Weston MainStage, and I hope we can pack the house again with audiences who love Sam, the wonders of live theatre, and the sweet victory of a true underdog.
Steve Stettler |
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CONNECTIONS & CONTEXTS
What DOES it take to get a reservation at a top restaurant?
By Kim Severson, San Francisco Chronicle Staff Writer
The French Laundry is one of the most sought-after tables in the country…even celebrities have to wait for months! Discover the secrets of getting through to the reservationist at this and other hot restaurants. more |
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RESOURCES
FURTHER READING
• FULLY COMMITTED, script by Becky Mode and Mark Setlock
• KITCHEN CONFIDENTIAL: ADVENTURES IN THE CULINARY UNDERBELLY, by Anthony Bourdain |
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