Fully Committed

In the dismal basement of a ridiculously trendy Woolloomooloo restaurant are 30 phones all hooked up to the same number, all with irrational customers waiting for immediate attention. Into this battleground comes Sam, the young, female Reservations Manager, whose acting career has been put on hold while she navigates through the complaints, suggestions and blistering demands of her callers. There’s also a line to her touchy, award-winning boss who can change ‘fully booked’ to ‘fully committed’ on a whim.

Sam (Contessa Terrone) is tested daily by this bizarre set-up, making do as best she can, hungry as ever, running between the phones (and her father on a dodgy cell-phone), giving detailed impressions of the callers as she goes, from Gwyneth Paltrow’s pushy agent down. She even is obliged to clean up after a customer deposits one big meal all over the upstairs floor.

The play was first shown at the Ensemble in 2002, with Jamie Oxenbould as Sam, and it’s been widely updated by writer Becky Mode for a 2016 Broadway run. Meals in ridiculously overbooked restaurants are now high fashion. ‘Global fusion’ has become ‘molecular gastronomy’. One meal (at $600 per person) is described as ‘crispy deer lichen atop a slowly deflating, scent-filled pillow dusted with edible dirt’. Yum.

The play has been ‘Australianised’. Tom Keneally gets a mention, as does the Ensemble itself – there’s a part that Sam might get when she goes for an audition tomorrow. But quite why Gwyneth Paltrow would want to bring 15 people to the restaurant in a jaunt booked from New York is unexplained.

And what’s with the 30 phones spread out in this basement, all linked to the one incoming phone line? Surely there would be a switchboard system capable of corralling them together? But one switchboard would limit Contessa Terrone’s ability to sprint from phone to phone, as she single-handedly brings the many off-stage characters to life.

Director Kate Champion had to big say in proceedings, along with Set Designer Anna Tregloan. The play ended in a loud deluge of genuine appreciation.

Frank Hatherley

Photographer: Prudence Upton.