Sitting in the lobby of the Peterborough Players on a cold January morning actor Kraig Swartz said he remembers the first time he saw Becky Mode’s comedy “Fully Committed.”
“It is jaw-dropping hilarious and outrageous,” Swartz said.
It’s a comedy that finds the fun in a customer service job and having to deal with bad behavior, he said.
“I am so familiar with people behaving badly and this play is all about people behaving horrifically. And I think that is really potent right now,” Swartz said.
“I saw this off Broadway in 2001,” Swartz said. “I remember seeing it and thinking ‘this show is written for me.’ And it wasn’t, but it felt that way.”
Then Players’ artistic director Gus Kaikkonen saw it, Swartz said, “And said, ‘yeah we’ve got to get this for Peterborough.”
Swartz tackled the one-man play and its 37 different characters later in 2001.
“We were actually the first theater outside of New York City to get this play. So I think I was the first person outside of New York to do it,” Swartz said.
The Players is bringing the comedy back for its third annual winter season. But it is actually the 10th production of “Fully Committed” for Swartz. Since 2001 Swartz’s “Fully Committed” performance has won him Philadelphia’s Best Actor Barrymore Award and Michigan’s Thespie Award.
The play takes place in the basement of “the most fancy restaurant of New York.” in which the restaurant runs a reservation telephone office.
“A restaurant where it takes six months just to get a reservation. … And this poor out of work actor is trying to field hundreds of calls from insanely desperate people all trying to get a table tonight,” Swartz said. “And there are no tables for them and it’s about the way he feels with these outrageous characters – in these outrageous settings – with these intense needs. And as we cycle through these crazy calls the story of this fellow’s situation develops and a plot begins to develop and he plays himself, all the crazy callers, everybody in the restaurant and everybody in his family, 37 people.”
Mode wrote the play between 2000 and 2001.
“Reservations were not being taken online at the time,” Swartz said.
The play was rewritten in 2016 to take into account the rise of the internet and cellphone use.
“The story of the writing of this play was playwright Becky Mode and the original actor from the play, Mark Setlock, were pals, work pals. They worked together in the basement of a reservation taking office in the basement of a restaurant in New York that I’m actually not allowed to name. It’s still open. But at the time it was the hottest restaurant in New York,” Swartz said. “And they could not believe how badly behaved all these incredibly wealthy, powerful, famous people were when they wanted their table – they would turn into these insane screaming children.”
Being an amazing mimc, Setlock started to the different callers to entertain his co-worker.
“He would imitate these crazy callers for Becky and unbeknownst to Mark, Becky started taking notes. And she started sculpting this play,” Swartz said. “The two of them pooled their talents and developed this amazing, amazing vehicle that was, for many years, one of the most produced plays in the history of American theatre.
“Fully Committed” opens Thursday and runs through Jan. 27. Directed by Kaikkonen, Fully Committed is approximately 90 minutes and is Rated PG-13.
Tickets are $42 and can be bought online www.peterboroughplayers.org or at the box office at call 603-924-7585.
The Peterborough Players is located at 55 Hadley Road in Peterborough.
Meghan Pierce is digital editor at the Monadnock Ledger-Transcript. She can be reached at mpierce@ledgertranscript.com.