Jesse Tyler Ferguson                                 photos by Joan Marcus

 

                             By Eugene Paul

 

Sam, youngish, nice-ish looking, pleasantish, works what passes for the switchboard of so grand a restaurant that you barely dare utter its name, taking reservations for a place you cannot get into because that’s the name of the game.  It’s his regular job which he will not admit while he’s waiting for gigs in his acting career, but ya gotta live.  He, and every other character who manages to get on a phone – his own (terrible reception down there until you find the right spot), the restaurant’s inner and outer lines, and that red phone only ultra special Chef uses, all are played by inimitable Jesse Tyler Ferguson who is doing this theater gig while his real job is starring on television.  Yes, it does get a mite complicated.

 

 

But first, you just have to gaze at the new swoop of a purple curtain cascading down from its way high gold proscenium arch  to its way lush gold fringe bottom, isn’t that an eye popper or what… Until it effortlessly hauls itself away to reveal one of the most eye popping, sassy concept settings in the city, designer Derek McLane’s skittering leaning tower of stored extra restaurant seats high lighted by designer Ben Stanton, hovering over a grunge of pipes amid which are the desk and phones Sam works at, down in the bowels beneath the splendiferous restaurant whose name blisters lips.

 

Okay, now we can go on.  Ostensibly, while Sam does all the work and gets all the agita, Sam is not the reservations manager, Bob is. And Bob calls in to say his car has died on the L.I.E. Which, true or not, means Sam is really stuck.  We learn every bit of this because Jesse Tyler Ferguson is acting not only Sam the Stuck but each and every character who calls in and we have a front row seat into every trial and tribulation that comes his way.  Thick and fast, as it happens, because we get the unmistakable impression that playwright Becky Mode is writing from bitter, bloodsweatandtears experience, now overlaid with a syrupy sense of revenge, revenge that is especially sweet and delicious as it’s cooked up in this tasty dish or rather dishes if you’ll pardon the snide culinary overtones. Somebody has lived these lines.

 

 

Sam is not going to get home for Christmas. He dearly wants to.  His mother has died recently and his dad, his nice, nice dad is hurting.  The other kids are, of course, gathering to comfort and support their father but Sam, bottom of the totem pole Sam, has to work Christmas day because a spiteful maitre D said so, and Sam needs to pay more rent money because Mike has left him.  And the rent.  Sam needs this job. So when he’s ordered to come upstairs and do a particularly disgusting task, he has to do it.  He’s trapped.  Playwright Mode, artist to the core, does what all artists to the core do: use their life experiences, no matter how gross, in their art.  Quite several steps beyond making lemonade of the lemons life gives you.

 

If, on occasion, Sam faces the same, persistent, grit-your-teeth types who just MUST get into that holy of holies of a restaurant and things get a tad repetitious, never fear, director Jason Moore and author Mode have practiced their pacing so well that the next voice you hear will jolt you back in place. Director Moore has either a superb touch or Jesse Tyler Ferguson is a superb technician or both because Jesse Tyler Ferguson makes it all simply seem to happen, not a trace of sweat with all those rambunctious crew he summons up.  The whole cast is Jesse.  And because of that – spoiler alert: --there’s a happy ending. Sam gets to go home for Christmas. But how he gets to that point generates a few more smiles and satisfied laughs.  Enjoy.

                                                         

Fully Committed.  At the Lyceum Theatre, 149 West 45^th Street, near Broadway.  Tickets: $45-$147. 212-239-6200. 90 min. Thru July 24.