Andrew MacDonald-Smith in Fully Committed, Teatro Live. Photo by Marc J Chalifoux
By Liz Nicholls, .ca
A phone starts ringing before our unemployed actor hero even arrives at his day job for a shift in the underworld — at the reservation desk hidden in the nether regions of the hottest, hippest Manhattan restaurant.
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For the next 80 minutes running, and I do mean running, time, the ringtones (sound designer: Bernardo Pacheco) never stop in Fully Committed, Becky Mode’s clever 1999 tour de force for one harried booking clerk and four phones. And in Farren Timoteo’s Teatro Live! production we have the great fun of watching a virtuoso actor take telephone acting to dizzying comic heights.
As Sam, Andrew MacDonald-Smith, a Teatro leading man (and former Teatro artistic director), negotiates both sides of every conversation. This involves his conjuring, at a frantic tempo and with uncanny precision, a whole gallery of insufferable people: imperious, snobby, truculent, entitled patrons of every age (and posture, accent, and amazingly, size) — from a wizened pensioner with a list of physical complaints, a socialite dragon, a silky-voiced Mobster…. They’re put on hold; they recur, much to the audience’s delight.
The “molecular gastronomy” menu isn’t what the ordinary joe would call actual food. It runs to things like cuttlefish or lavender foam, or infusions of pipe tobacco smoke, and “conceptual” garnishes like edible dirt. Did I hear “chicken in a bubble” right? This isn’t cutting-edge haute cuisine satire in 2026, I guess, but it made me laugh.
Everyone wants, no demands, a table on Friday or Saturday at 7:30 or 8 . In the case of Gwyneth Paltrow’s breezy, self-important personal assistant Bryce, there’s a hilarious list of additional requirements (prefaced by “how ARE you?” and signing off with “thanks a trillion!”): a table for 15, a vegan tasting menu, locally sourced, no rice, no corn, no foam, no proximity to the lighting sconce, no female wait staff at the table….”
Andrew MacDonald-Smith in Fully Committed, Teatro Live! Photo by Marc J Chalifoux
Interspersed with these are calls on the red-alert phone with the snarling ego-monster celebrity chef who affects a working-class cadence (he answers the phone “what the hell do you want”), and on the house phone to a gallic divo of a maître d who answers “‘’Allo. Be Brief.” There’s an assortment of cowed kitchen staff, including an adenoidal Brit who couches demands in apology.
And then there’s Sam’s own cellphone. Passive-aggressive calls from his actor ‘friend’, gloating about a callback to Lincoln Center. Calls with his agent brushing off Sam’s questions about his own audition and callback (“you lack a strong sense of personal entitlement”). ”). Guilt calls from his sweet but persistent, recently widowed Midwest dad (“okie dokie, adios amigo”), putting on pressure for a family trip.
Andrew MacDonald-Smith in Fully Committed, Teatro Live! Photo by Marc J Chalifoux.
The last time I saw Fully Committed was in the Citadel’s small Rice house with Sam at a single desk as I recall. Timoteo’s production occupies the much bigger Varscona stage. And MacDonald-Smith, a gifted physical comedian, races through a wide, suitably unglamorous basement exile — Chantel Fortin’s design, lighted by Skye Grinde, has lockers, pipes, a water cooler, half-hearted Christmas decorations, a drab couch, a table or two — scrambling for better cellphone reception. and answering phones separated by distance.
And at the centre of a play that unfolds entirely in phone conversations is Sam himself — and the sly irony that an unemployed actor is being played by an actor so super-employed. (Lucky for us, Lincoln Center is missing a bet). And MacDonald-Smith is fully committed as one might say, to populating a world with vivid, recurring New York characters you recognize instantly, three dozen or more. In Timoteo’s production, the dimensions of the quick and prop-less signature transformations into which MacDonald-Smith bends himself, physically and vocally, are astutely judged. Fully Committed, after all, is about foam, not ham, as Timoteo and MacDonald-Smith know.
Andrew MacDonald-Smith in Fully Committed, Teatro Live!. Photo by Marc J Chalifoux
But without a dimensional Sam, Fully Committed would be a showpiece cadenza, however impressively extended, rather than a play And in this production MacDonald-Smith gives us more, in his Michelin star performance. It’s a glimpse into the life of an underachiever, an actor working his ass off to pay for his theatre passion, auditioning hopefully, withstanding rejection.
And there’s this: Sam’s likeable qualities and remarkably even temper generate a certain natural suspense. Do good humour and manners in this class war zone have a limit? Are there boundaries to being put-upon and condescended to? Can the little guy take charge of his fortunes? I leave you with these questions as an appetizer.
It’s a fun way to spend an evening. And Teatro won’t lose your reservation, or bump you if Helen Mirren shows up and wants your seat (well, OK, maybe her, but you know, really anybody else).
REVIEW
Fully Committed
Theatre: Teatro Live!
Written by: Becky Mode
Directed by: Farren Timoteo
Starring: Andrew MacDonald-Smith
Where: Varscona Theatre, 10329 83 Ave.
Running: through June 21
Tickets: teatroq.com
