Is it my imagination, or has Broadway been taken over by the Jessies/Jesses of the foodservice trade? Jessie Mueller arrived April 24 at the Atkinson as a pie-making Waitress in a small-town Dixie diner, followed April 25 at the Lyceum by Jesse Tyler Ferguson, manning Reservations at a high-end, Fully Committed Manhattan eatery.
The title is ritzy restaurant parlance for 鈥渁ll booked up鈥濃攁n illusion all dining establishments like to foster so the rich and famous will bray and bitch to get in. Telephone manners evidently have nothing to do with table manners, and Ferguson gets a 90-minute earful from an assortment of pedigrees, predominately pit-bull.
Tightly-wound and tightly-wired for action, he hits the ground running and doesn鈥檛 have a moment鈥檚 pause the whole performance, juggling the constant jingle-jangle of the reservations phone from indignant, impatient, demanding, entitled hoi polloi. Well, there is one pause you won鈥檛 want to know about鈥攁 bathroom break to clean up somebody else鈥檚 mess because all the busboys fled the building in horror.
Otherwise, the affable and eminently flappable Ferguson is deskbound in the boiler-room bowels of a super-chic restaurant in Lower Manhattan, a veritable Lord of the Rings fielding all sorts of impossible requests for 鈥渁 nice table anywhere between 7:30 and 8.鈥� Some customers have special needs beyond a reservation, like Gwyneth Paltrow鈥檚 personal assistant who says the star thought the lighting too harsh at her table last time and wants to send over a flunky with a bulb that鈥檒l give off a warmer glow for her meal. (Gwyneth also doesn鈥檛 care to have any female wait staffer working her table.)
Then there are the in-house battles that require refereeing鈥攖he snit-fit between the arrogant chef and the Bon Appetit editor who called his cuisine 鈥渆dible dirt,鈥� or the standoff between a belligerently persistent grande dame and the French maitre d鈥� who finds her just too ugly to talk to. All these plates of conflict keep spinning while his immediate superior is AWOL having a job interview at Bed, Bath and Beyond. His revenge: leaving his boss with all the lines of the phone lit up like angry red planets.
Being a fireball moving across such a tricky minefield is pretty exhausting work, and the smile of relief on Ferguson鈥檚 face at the curtain call was heartbreakingly big and genuine. It was obvious even from his entrance applause that the house was full of friends, none of them more than two degrees of separation from him.
The afterparty at Chelsea鈥檚 swank Eventi Hotel confirmed that. Sweetest of all was the 11th anniversary of The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee (Ferguson鈥檚 Broadway debut). Lisa Howard, Derrick Baskin, Jose Llana and Sarah Saltzberg showed up to salute their co-star in his herculean solo effort. So did the show鈥檚 composer (William Finn), director (James Lapine), choreographer (Dan Knechtges) and producers (Carole Rothman and Barbara Whitman). Representing his Modern Family family: Eric Stonestreet.
Ferguson was plainly touched by the turn-out. 鈥淚t was overwhelming, having all those people together tonight,鈥� he admitted. 鈥淚t鈥檚 been ten years since I鈥檝e been on Broadway鈥擨鈥檝e certainly been around New York, doing Shakespeare in the Park鈥攂ut I鈥檝e wanted to do Broadway for a very long time. It鈥檚 an emotional night for me.鈥�
He knows he could have made it easier on himself. 鈥淚t definitely feels like an Everest climb, and just getting to opening night seems like it is a real achievement.鈥�
How he got there, he hasn鈥檛 a clue. 鈥淚 just had to. Fear is a great motivator. I wanted to do something that scared me, and this certainly scared me. I鈥檓 usually drawn to projects when I鈥檓 not doing Modern Family, and I like things that intimidate me.鈥�
How many calls does he get per show? 鈥淥h, God! I haven鈥檛 counted鈥攁nd I don鈥檛 think I should.鈥�
Even his director, Jason Moore, doesn鈥檛 know. 鈥淭hat鈥檚 a great question,鈥� he said. 鈥淚 don鈥檛 think we ever counted. It must be upward of 140 phone rings that come in.鈥� The role of the reservations receiptionist requires that Ferguson also play his whole onslaught of callers. that were originally advertised. 鈥淲e just cut a few,鈥� explained Moore, 鈥渢o make things tighter and to consolidate a couple of the voices.鈥�
As it is, the actor looks like he鈥檚 doing a slo-mo variation of the Saint Vitas Dance, jumping back and forth from caller to his sane self. 鈥淲e always tried to find a gesture that was a transition between each character, so the gesture would help the audience understand he was talking to somebody new,鈥� the director said.
With characters coming like comets, it鈥檚 easy to get lost in that maze of words. 鈥淛esse started learning the piece early,鈥� he said. 鈥淚t鈥檚 a very mathematical kind of memorization. If you do a monologue, usually there鈥檚 a story to it so if you kinda get off track, you can paraphrase and get back on. With this, every phone call is a new idea.鈥�
To receive calls from home in this subterranean frayed-nerve center, Ferguson has to place his cellphone atop an air-pipe. 鈥淭hat was my idea,鈥� beamed Moore, 鈥渂ecause 1) I wanted to include technology, and 2) I wanted a reason for him to have to move around, make it a little more farcical. Then he鈥檇 have to run around and do things. Most New Yorkers know about the cellphone on a pipe so it was a fun thing to do.鈥�
鈥�, and we wanted this to be more of a trendy downtown restaurant. We kinda imagined it was probably a two-star restaurant in Tribeca that has a following all over the country. Jesse鈥檚 from Albuquerque and he has family in the Midwest, so we wanted to take advantage of a lot of accents and character types that he knows from his growing up so we changed quite a few of the types of characters.鈥�
In long shot, the director and the actor could pass for brothers鈥攁nd the similarities don鈥檛 stop with that, either: 鈥淎ctually, we have the same birthdate鈥擮ct. 22鈥攁nd the same middle name. I鈥檓 Jason Tyler Moore, and he鈥檚 Jesse Tyler Ferguson.鈥�
One celebrity didn鈥檛 make the opening-night cut. 鈥淲e tried Justin Bieber [in the script] for two nights, and he just didn鈥檛 work out. This is a New York kind of show. Diane Sawyer, Alan Greenspan, Malcolm Gladwell鈥攖hat鈥檚 a certain kind of celebrity. Justin Bieber is a different version of that, so we decided it would be best if we cut that reference.鈥�
Becky Mode, the playwright, was glad to see The Bieber go. 鈥淲e experimented. We ended up just moving Gwyneth a little farther up top because we didn鈥檛 want it to feel too Old World, but when Justin Bieber came to the restaurant, it felt like 鈥楾his isn鈥檛 a New York restaurant. Justin Bieber isn鈥檛 here. He will never find this place.鈥欌�
There were plenty of other changes. 鈥淭o me, it feels like a massive rewrite. I updated the technology and the food references and the rise of Celebrity Chef culture. And we had to figure out how to acknowledge the cellphone without letting it overtake the play. We had to do a celebrity update. Naomi Campbell became Gwyneth.鈥�
Mode knows of what she writes. 鈥淚鈥檝e worked in many, many restaurants. I was an actress who waitressed. I was a terrible waitress, but I did it over and over again.鈥�
Douglas Aibel, artistic director of the Vineyard Theatre, was a first-nighter grinning ear to ear all evening since Fully Committed sprouted from his Vineyard, directed by the late Nicholas Martin. 鈥淢ark Setlock, who developed the characters with Becky, was the first show鈥檚 first star, and Roger Bart was the second,鈥� Aibel recalled. 鈥淎fter the Vineyard run, we transferred to the Cherry Lane, where it ran for two years.鈥�
There were other Vineyard connections to this revival, he was happy to point out: 鈥淛ason Moore directed his first play, Avenue Q, at the Vineyard鈥攁nd Jesse has appeared in a couple of shows there as well. So there鈥檚 a warm family vibe about it.鈥�
It鈥檚 nigh impossible to upstage a one-man show, but set designer Derek McLane has given it his best shot with a cluster of tables and chairs hovering over a basement reservation office. 鈥淚 call it The Tornado of Chairs,鈥� he said. 鈥淚t鈥檚 meant to reflect the chaos of the whole reservations system. And all the pipes I based on the old Union Square Caf茅 reservations room, which I actually visited and photographed. Once upon a time, the reservations room was in the basement there. It looked like a boiler room. The back of the set is a wine wall, and there are 900 bottles on the wall.鈥�
Scott Hart, who operates the restaurant 44 & X (at, where else, West 44th and Tenth Avenue) in Ferguson鈥檚 old neighborhood, was table-hopping at the party, testifying to the truth of the above. 鈥淚 thought Jesse did a fabulous job at nailing this calamitous business,鈥� he trilled enthusiastically. Creating cocktail puns is a specialty of the house. Currently topping the bill there are The Wicked Ozmopolitan and The Hamilgin. 鈥淚 think we鈥檙e going to have do a Fully Committed cocktail for sure.鈥�
