Having reservations One man holds the phone in Portsmouth BY MEGAN GRUMBLING
	Fully Committed By Becky Mode. Directed by Spiro Veloudos. Featuring John Kuntz. Produced by the Seacoast Repertory Theatre, with the co-operation of the Lyric Stage Company of Boston, through May 29. Call (603) 433-4472.

For better or for worse (I’d argue for better), the closest we have to an exclusive alpha restaurant here in Portland is probably Fore Street. And though you might have to call a week in advance to get in on Saturday night, I’d wager that the receptionist there doesn’t receive wads of twenties from Mafiosi craven for tables. And that he’s never had to assure Naomi Campbell’s personal assistant that all female waitstaff will be banished from the model’s table. And that whatever the instructions he takes from Chef Hayward may be, they don’t sound like they’re coming from Snake of The Simpsons.

Yep, odds are that Fore Street’s receptionist (if they have one) has it pretty good compared to poor Sam (John Kuntz), the struggling actor stuck working the phones in the basement of Manhattan’s "it" restaurant. All day, the rich and entitled on the other end of the line demand, cajole, and threaten him for the coveted tables. But since the place is booked two months in advance, Sam has to break it to New York’s desperate elite that the restaurant is "fully committed." This urbane little phrase is what Chef wants Sam to use in place of "booked solid"; it is what everyone involved in the upper-echelon restaurant world should probably be; and it is also the title of a one-man show that presents a day in the life of Sam, A-list restaurant receptionist.

Sam is just one over-extended man, but John Kuntz ends up playing the voices of close to 40 different people by the end of Fully Committed (on loan from the Lyric Stage Company of Boston at Portsmouth’s Seacoast Rep). Among the characters are Jean-Claude (the maitre d’ with something quintessentially French stuck up his ass), Steph (the mellifluous British hostess), Hispanic Hector in the kitchen, East Indian Oscar in the office, and of course the egomaniacal bully Chef. Then there’s Brice, Naomi Campell’s über-annoying assistant; the wheezing Mafia don Veccini; the haughty Mrs. Vandebeer (whose family is said to have invented Saran Wrap); and a mysterious chain-smoker who sounds like Jack Nicholson and pronounces the "S" in "Sam" with weird enthusiasm. On top of that there’s Sam’s own dad, brother, German agent, and ingratiating rival actor friend Gerry.

Whew! Kuntz would make a great race car driver. His role calls for minute technical shifts and precise control at high speeds. In a given sequence, the phone rings five or six times, quick-fire, and he must answer as Sam, reply as someone strange or obnoxious, put them on hold, go on to the next, repeat. And that’s just the regular phone. There’s also an intercom to contend with, which connects him to Jean-Claude and Steph upstairs, and a scary red phone, with accompanying red light and buzzer, that is his lifeline to Chef. When all three communications devices go off in quick succession, Kuntz has to run back and forth across the stage, stab at the right buttons on the beeping machines, and flit between as many as a dozen characters in the span of a minute or two.

Obviously, the skill and timing that all this requires is intimidating, and Kuntz — a Boston professional and an instructor for Emerson’s BFA program in Solo Performance — both possesses the talent and has done the work. His lickety-split change-ups in voice, facial expression, posture, and gesture are more than just technically impressive; they are seamless enough to let us suspend disbelief. All by himself, he’s able to get us invested in multiple plot-lines at once: Will Sam’s agent call with news of a second call-back? Will the excruciating Carol-Anne Rubenstein-Fishburn ever get her table? Will Sam make it to the ladies room to clean up an accident before Mrs. Zagat gets there? It’s quite a feat for one person to keep all that moving, and it’s a further testament to Kuntz’s skill that it’s easy to forget, in following all the conversations, just what a feat it is.

Similar praise goes to the technical crew, and particularly stage manager Matt Cost, for the all the beeps, buzzers, and pre-recorded segments that fit so unerringly into and around Kuntz’s often dizzying pace of delivery. The set (designed by Skip Curtiss) is backed with brick walls, and with its cheap Salvation Army desks and piles of produce boxes, and true-to-life black seepage stains on the brick, it does well in evoking the depressing depths of a Manhattan eatery.

There are rare and nearly religious moments of silence in that basement, when nothing rings or flashes, and an incredulous Sam taps at the phone as if it were some sort of weasel feigning death. Kuntz’s Sam is rightly the least conspicuous of his mostly outrageous and in fact caricatured characters, and these phone-less breathers give us a chance to appreciate the average guy valiantly negotiating the insanity of his day.

The progression of that day is a lot like a Seinfeld episode: ironic, absurd, fraught with petty histrionics. Fully Committed is light fare, entertains with the scope and style of a well-executed sitcom, and makes good fun of a restaurant culture that is blessedly far, far away.

Megan Grumbling can be reached at mgrumbling@hotmail.com