Y COMMITTED BROADWAY PROFESSIONAL

There’s a semi-substantial thread in Sam’s anxiety about the dry spell in his acting career, pegged to an audition for a Lincoln Center Twelfth Night for which his passive-aggressively competitive friend has had a callback. Fully Committed, while not without its charms, is thinner gruel. While that play took a far more outlandish premise (its protagonist went to work minding the collectibles in Barbra Streisand’s Malibu basement), the character and situation developed in constantly surprising directions, delivering a payoff that involved considerable personal growth. It’s tempting to compare the play to another, more recent one-man off-Broadway hit about a struggling actor forced to take a humiliating job to pay the rent, Buyer & Cellar. Jesse Tyler Ferguson's Broadway Comedy Gets Inspiration From Adele, Richard Kind and 'Ratatouille' (Q&A) Given the shifts in thinking about one-percent entitlement, the whole idea of the rich and famous clamoring to pay a fortune for molecular gastronomy sprinkled with edible dirt and toxic-sounding foam feels like a single-joke concept whose time has elapsed.

I confess I chuckled at that, but for all its updated references (Yelp, Open Table), the play nonetheless seems passé. And also how often you can laugh at evidence that the only person more annoying than Gwyneth Paltrow is her personal assistant, whose multiple calls cover requirements for a 15-person vegan tasting menu (no legumes or female wait staff) and adjustments to the lighting. What you get out of it will depend on your devotion to the very likeable Modern Family star - back on Broadway for the first time since The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee 10 years ago. I kept thinking it would be funnier in a 200-seat black box theater where it really was all about the mad skills of the actor. So while it’s easy to admire Derek McLane’s elaborate set - a cluttered basement office beneath a sculptural tangle of dining chairs and a wall-size wine refrigerator - it’s also impossible to escape the nagging feeling that this flippant satirical comedy is being swallowed up by its outsize production. A downtown hit in 1999 that’s been widely produced around the country and abroad ever since, the play doesn’t lend itself to bloated Broadway treatment, no matter who is starring. The virtuoso performance is one that begs to be described as a comedic tour de force, and unquestionably, Ferguson’s efforts command applause, as do those of director Jason Moore, who has provided almost non-stop business for the actor to juggle.īut all that sweat somehow doesn’t add up to much more than a string of sometimes-funny jokes in Becky Mode’s one-person one-act about the ridiculous faddishness of upscale foodie culture.

Y COMMITTED BROADWAY PROFESSIONAL

Aided only by lightning-fast shifts of his voice and physical mannerisms, he also plays Sam’s bosses and co-workers, as well as his family, friends and professional associates, and the constant stream of customers on the end of his phone line, lobbying vociferously for a table. In Fully Committed, Jesse Tyler Ferguson plays Sam, the hapless staffer left to man the phone lines solo at the most in-demand high-end restaurant in Manhattan.

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