Remote Post

Fully Committed, Music Theatre of Connecticut

When Becky Mode’s comedy Fully Committed was playing on Broadway in 2016, critic Charles Isherwood of the New York Times quibbled about the changed attitude toward the kind of conspicuous consumption displayed at the ultra-exclusive restaurant featured in the play at the time as compared to 1999, when the play first ran at Vineyard Theater. It was a canny reference to how context can change what we laugh at or not in a play that gently ribs a certain stratum of society.

Now, in the midst of the COVID-19 epidemic that closed theaters last spring, the antics of Sam, an actor between roles who works on the reservation desk in the basement of a “world-renowned, ridiculously red-hot Manhattan restaurant,” comes freighted with not a little nostalgia. Once upon a time people gathered in theaters and in restaurants, and you could pack both to capacity. Not so now. Music Theatre of Connecticut is one of very few theaters given the go-ahead by the state of CT and by Actor’s Equity to reopen, and MTC’s in-person seating has been shrunk to 25. Others may view the show live online. Which is how I saw it on opening night.

Matt Densky as Sam in Fully Committed at Music Theatre of Connecticut, directed by Kevin Connors (photo by Alex Mongillo)

The play is a one-person show. Sam, played by Matt Densky, arrives for work in the de rigueur mask of our times, then is able to get on with his job unmasked. The play’s action, without any face-to-face contacts, seems only too apropos. In his post, a sort of remote frontlines, Sam must man all alone multiple phones spread across the space where calls overlap and interrupt. Densky acts out a tour de force of the voices and mannerisms of all the callers, while Sam deals with ricocheting situations and considerable comic crosstalk, and comes out of the whirlwind “with his soul untouched” (as The Boss might say). It’s all enacted by Densky in split-second changes that are likely to make you a bit punchy, and, while more wit in the lines would be welcome, Densky is a versatile comic actor able to score delighted laughs with shifts in voice and attitude.

Matt Denksy in Fully Committed at Music Theatre in Connecticut, directed by Kevin Connors (photo by Alex Mongillo)

There’s the fussy French Maître D, the louche head chef—who sounds suspiciously at times like a certain overbearing political figure of our day—a co-worker calling in with MIA excuses, a wise guy, a big name actress’ manager, and a dizzying array of would-be clientele, some the height of pretentiousness, others the height of cluelessness. And all of it is handled by Sam like a candle burning both ends while he also deals with a few matters on the home-front: his disarmingly sweet dad wants him home for Christmas, his acting friend is having a big break, and Sam is sweating out the wait for a potential callback at Lincoln Center. All within the realm of reality in Manhattan.

And that’s the fun of the play but also—now—its poignancy. We took all this for granted, now look. What’s more, the fact that restaurants are re-opening with much more limited seating makes vying for that one table by the window (or what have you) more anxious than ever. The play, formerly a kind of high energy lark on the madness of multitasking (in the days before ubiquitous cellphones), has been updated a bit, so that Sam’s personal calls are on cell while the landlines are all for work. We see before us a kind of wonderfully choreographed chaos. It’s still high energy, it’s still a lark, but now we’re apt to be more than a bit apprehensive about that man on the flying trapeze, so to speak. Won’t someone give Sam a break—from the calls and in his career? Won’t someone drop a food pellet to the poor creature on his dreadful treadmill?

Matt Densky in Fully Committed at Music Theatre of Connecticut, directed by Kevin Connors (photo by Alex Mongillo)

Our attitude toward the action might take its cue from what we take Sam to be. Is he an actor who has to work a desk, or a worker who wants to be an actor? Unlike on Broadway with a name actor like Jesse Tyler Ferguson giving the show some celebrity box office, here Matt Densky is a native of CT who has done comic wonders at MTC in The SantaLand Diaries and The 39 Steps (and is on pandemic hiatus from the Broadway tour of WICKED) and he makes Sam’s situation feel that much more earned. Directed by Kevin Connors on a wonderfully detailed set by Jessie Lizotte, Densky’s Sam is beleaguered but never quite beside himself. He’s got great turn-on-a-dime timing and plenty of panache. We believe he could become as good an actor as Densky is. In other words, there’s hope for the performer of even the most thankless task—at least in Manhattan. Back then.

Seeing the show online provides its own sense of paradox. What makes a theater like MTC a treat is its intimacy; every seat is close to the action. Online, the show is viewed at a distance that’s a bit like having a Broadway mezzanine seat (which critics are never given!), though the broadcast sound leaves a bit to be desired, as the surrounding space creates more distortion than the direct-feed of computer-to-computer hook-up does on Zoom streams. Perhaps that can be improved, but in any case Fully Committed—which is the catch-phrase for a restaurant totally booked—is a good choice for those of us not yet fully committed to sharing public spaces with our fellow sufferers in the current state of affairs. It’s a play rather light on plot but strong on presence, and that serves to remind us of why live theater helps make life worthwhile. And it’s therapeutic to see someone onstage again! The make-believe of theater can’t always keep chaos at bay, but theater as make-believe chaos can be an apt diversion.

Only commit.

Matt Densky in Fully Committed at Music Theatre of Connecticut, directed by Kevin Connors (photo by Alex Mongillo)

Fully Committed
by Becky Mode
Directed by Kevin Connors
With Matt Densky

Scenic/Prop Design: Jessie Lizotte; Lighting Design: RJ Romeo; Costume Design: Diane Vanderkroef; Sound Design: Will Atkin; Stage Managing: Jim Schilling

Music Theatre of Connecticut
September 11-27, 2020

From the press release:

MTC is thrilled to be reopening its doors as one of three professional theatres in the country to be given permission to host indoor events via the approval of the state of CT and Actor’s Equity Association. Alongside this reopening comes health & safety protocols to assure the safety of the audience, crew, and actors. Some of these protocols include staggered arrival based on seating, no more than 25 audience members in the theatre, and masks required at all times. Until further notice, all performances will not only be presented in person, but through live stream as well, so that the shows may be watched live from the comfort of your home. Both in person and live stream tickets are available. For more information on MTC’s reopening protocols you can go here.

Gags Galore

Review of The 39 Steps, Music Theatre of Connecticut

Enter the wacky world of spies in England and Scotland between the two great wars of last century. Adapted by Patrick Barlow for the stage, from John Buchan’s 1915 novel by way of Alfred Hitchcock’s 1935 thriller, The 39 Steps, directed by Pamela Hill at Music Theatre of Connecticut, keeps up a steady pace of escapes and oddball encounters, with the tone of an espionage story jettisoned in favor of skit comedy and slapstick. With all characters played by four actors, and the artifice of theater exposed right on the stage, props get put through their paces and the audience is made to indulge its imagination.

Richard Hannay (Gary Lindemann), Annabella Schmidt (Laura Cable) (photos from Music Theatre of Connecticut)

MTC likes such stripped down staging, as it has shown with its staged radio shows, and much of the charm of the show comes from a willingness to make theater a frenetic game of make-believe. That starts with Gary Lindemann’s Richard Hanny, a posh Brit who lounges about narrating his ennui before being catapulted into a series of dangerous predicaments by way of an encounter with Annabella Schmidt, a mysterious German woman played with hilarious creepiness by Laura Cable. Lindemann’s Hanny is a kind of unflappable Everyman, even if there’s nothing at all everyday about his adventures.

Pamela (Laura Cable), Richard Hannay (Gary Lindemann)

The acting here is turned up a few notches from the kind of overplaying you’d find—played for real—in B movies, or on radio programs. The situations also smack of radio shows, with visualization a key part of the effect—except, of course, for the sight gags. My favorite features Lindemann and Cable—as Pamela, a skeptical woman pressed into aiding Hannay—handcuffed together and trying to get over a stile. And the bit when she removed her stockings while handcuffed makes comedy of discomfort.

Clown #2 (Matt Densky), Clown #1 (Jim Schilling)

The play is designed to let such tomfoolery go on as long as it can, particularly the many bits furnished by the two clowns, Matt Densky and Jim Schilling. It helps that Schilling bears a resemblance to that great veteran of televised skit comedy, Tim Conway. When Schilling mutters and putters around, setting up chairs for a speech, or has to carry several chairs offstage at once, the gags are vintage Conway. As the other Clown, Matt Densky tends to specialize in outrageous voices—I don’t think I’ll ever forget how his diabolical German says “Mr. Hannay!”

Clown #2 (Matt Densky)

The presence of diabolical Germans and slow-witted Scots (without quite as funny an accent as you’d expect) and bland society types and traveling lingerie salesmen, to say nothing of the many caps Schilling juggles as cop, train conductor, and passenger, lets us experience a parade of characters as matters of costume and voice and mannerism.

The cast of The 39 Steps

The entire cast is having so much fun you might find yourself forgetting what is going on with the story. It doesn’t really matter, and the plot’s flights of fancy are abetted by a number of references to Hitchcock films for the attentive. I have to say though that the production I saw in London’s West End in 2015 seemed more verbally inventive, but that might be the effect of familiarity.

MTC’s version of this screwball caper comedy brings together two of its top comic actors—Schilling, who has played many roles, and Densky, last seen as the irritable department store elf in The Santaland Diaries—with Lindemann and Cable, two other comic talents who work very well together, to provide an evening of inspired silliness with pretty much a gag a minute. Seeing these quick-timed switches in such close proximity to an audience makes for a certain awe at what they get away with.

The 39 Steps
Adapted by Patrick Barlow
From the novel by John Buchan
From the movie by Alfred Hitchcock
Directed by Pamela Hill

Costume Design: Diane Vanderkroef; Wigs: Peggy de la Cruz; Set Design: Jordan Janota; Lighting Design: Michael Blagys; Sound Design: Monet Fleming; Stage Manager: Gary Betsworth

Cast: Laura Cable, Matt Densky, Gary Lindemann, Jim Schilling

Music Theatre of Connecticut
March 2-18, 2018

One Effing Elf

Review of The SantaLand Diaries at Musical Theatre of Connecticut

Best-selling, Grammy-winning author David Sedaris has come a long way since his stint as an elf in a Macy’s SantaLand, and he’s also come a long way since the humorous essay he wrote about that experience, which has also been shared as a spoken word feature on NPR and This American Life. And yet the story as adapted for the stage by Joe Mantello has taken on a life of its own since its debut in 1996. It’s become a holiday staple for many a theater in the U.S., a one-man show that lets us laugh at the corny traditions that constitute “the Christmas spirit”—a glut of decorations, food consumption, familiar tunes, holiday reruns, and much buying, and sometimes giving, that happens without fail from late in November (or earlier) and runs till December 25th.

Ostensibly all the hoopla has something to do with the birth of Christ, but in fact, in the U.S., it mostly has to do with marketing, as every store in the land, almost, has its Christmas come-on. One of the best-known of all department stores, of course, is Macy’s and one of its ways of celebrating the season and getting people to come in and shop is providing a guy dressed in the traditional garb associated (at least since a very influential Coca-Cola ad campaign anyway) with old St. Nick to meet the kids and listen to Christmas wishes. And it was at Macy’s that Sedaris really did take the job of being one of the helpers of the store’s Santas. The SantaLand Diaries plays as the amusingly jaundiced view of a rather less than inspired elf enduring the fake cheer, the clueless “foreigners,” the pushy and obnoxious parents, the scared or sick or displeased children, and the on-the-job antics of his fellow not-so-bright elves and a variety of Santas.

Matt Densky (Crumpet)

Taking the name Crumpet, our narrator/hero is at his best in recounting the kind of behind-the-scenes stories that play to our curiosity about “show-biz,” even this far down the food chain. As Crumpet says, many of the people who apply for a job in SantaLand—in New York anyway—are unemployed actors looking for some easy money at Christmastime. It helps, in a job like this, to be willing and able to transform oneself to match one’s costume. Green velvet, with striped stockings, pointy shoes and hat. The works. Crumpet’s tongue-in-cheek approach to the job—and, it seems, to life in general—is his best defense against the simple-mindedness of the task, but he’s also not the kind to fool himself with visions of sugarplums. He sees through everyone and almost anyone can be an occasion for an unflattering anecdote or apothegm.

Much of this material, however, pulls its punches. Rarely is Sedaris’s text truly witty and often an anecdote will sort of fizzle without any real zinger. It’s not really something to fault Sedaris on, since he wrote an essay of observational humor, the sort of thing that plays best as a stand-up monologue, seeming to come off the top of one’s head in the moment of telling. Turned into a play, the monologue has to have more zing, requiring a performer up to the task of taking on the raconteur role while also able to act out other characters who get mimicked by Crumpet. Fortunately Matt Densky, directed by Kevin Connors, has the skills needed to make Crumpet vivid, fun, and a little unsettling.

One of Densky’s strengths in the role is his mimicking ability. He does a number of quick “sketches” of the people Crumpet interacts with, and each one is a spot on “take off,” via vocal mannerism, of an immediately recognizable type. You’ve got to be cheerful to be an elf, but you’ve got to be mercurial to make the story of Crumpet work. Denksy’s got it down. A high point is the rendition of “Away in the Manger” in the manner of Liza Minelli.

Alas, there’s not enough of that sort of thing. You soon find yourself thinking that this material needs to be further adapted—enlarged to make room for Densky’s talent. He exults in the snide manner so much so that you don’t for a minute believe that you’re hearing the really juicy stuff. Most of Sedaris’s observations are pretty anodyne, never really going for the jugular. I know, it’s Christmas and all that and we’re supposed to be looking for the good in everyone, but that’s not Crumpet’s approach. He tends to see the worst in people. Not because he’s vicious but because people tend to live up to his worst expectations. And I can’t help thinking there are naughtier and nastier characterizations that were left out of Sedaris’s text in favor of gentler laughs.

Even so, caricaturing others can seem mean, but Crumpet doesn’t come across that way, primarily because the tone Sedaris, Mantello and Densky create is of someone who wants us on his side. We have to see he’s better than “this,” this job of being an elf, as his giddy glimpses of the training sessions and of the less than inspiring Santas shows. And so we’re eager to hear how he managed it—took on this thankless job and maintained his dignity and his sense of humor. By aiming his humor at others, of course, and the laughter we share with him is laughter at how daft the Christmas season is. It’s supposed to be jolly and merry, like Santa, but often it’s a downer or at least disappointing. So, why not liven it up with Crumpet, a refreshingly honest elf, as eager as many of us are to exit the enforced euphoria come December 25th, and get on with business as usual.

The SantaLand Diaries
By David Sedaris
Adapted by Joe Mantello
Directed by Kevin Connors
With Matt Densky

Costume Design: Diane Vanderkroef; Scenic Design: Carl Tallent; Lighting Design: Joshua Scherr; Stage Manager: Jim Schilling

Music Theatre of Connecticut
December 11-20, 2015