Ferguson stars as business major Mason Marzac alongside Grey's Anatomy's Jesse Williams and Suits's Patrick J. His latest Broadway venture is in Take Me Out, Richard Greenberg's award-winning play about a Major League Baseball player who comes out as gay. Fittingly for a famous sitcom star, he usually takes on comedic roles, complete with photo-worthy facial expressions.
Fully committed jesse tyler ferguson review tv#
Sam performs a little, private dance of triumph that’s pure Jesse Tyler Ferguson.Most people know Jesse Tyler Ferguson as a screen star - he's certainly got the awards to show for it, having amassed four Screen Actors Guild Awards and five Emmy nominations for playing Mitchell Pritchett on Modern Family. But did you know he's got a long theatre resume? He's appeared in nearly as many plays and musicals as TV shows in a variety of venues: on Broadway, off Broadway, and on the West Coast. The best moment in the show is after the chef is made aware that Bob, Sam’s co-worker, was the one who messed up a reservation, not Sam. Ferguson is a terrific Sam, whom we get to know in his conversations with his recently widowed father back in Ohio, his friend and rival actor – they’re both waiting for a call-back after an audition at Lincoln Center - even in the patience and the decency with which he treats some of the most difficult callers. But, if too many of the characters are indistinct and too few are all that interesting, one stands out. The unnamed restaurant serves “molecular gastronomy.” A sample dish: “crispy deer lichen atop a slowly deflating scent-filled pillow, dusted with edible dirt.” Bryce, Gwyneth’s Paltrow’s assistant, tells Sam: “Gwyneth would like to come in this weekend with fifteen people, on Saturday night at 8 p.m., and she’s gonna need a round, freestanding table…And no female waitstaff at the table.”Ī gift for vocal impersonations is not, as it turns out, in Ferguson’s wheelhouse. The satire is amusing, albeit mild and familiar. He also takes guff from a coked-up cook, a vulgar haranguing chef, an obnoxious co-worker named Bob who is AWOL, leaving Sam overwhelmed. He takes reservations from regulars, rubes, mobsters, socialites and celebrities all vying to get a seat at the table. The set somewhat dwarfs the actor who, over the course of 80 minutes, mostly sits at his desk answering one telephone call after another. Inspired by the actual former basement reservations room of Danny Meyer’s Union Square Cafe, it includes cluttered desks, 903 wine bottles, low-hanging plumbing pipes, and on top of it all, a collage of chairs, a metaphor for the chaos of a fancy restaurant. Now, Fully Committed is being presented at Broadway’s 950-seat Lyceum Theater, with a set by Derek McLane that has been featured in Architectural Digest. It had a minimal set by James Noone, and was a modest, diverting evening, an impressive showcase for the performer’s mimicry. It starred Mark Setlock, who is credited with creating many of the characters. I saw Becky Mode’s play in 1999 at the 180-seat Off-Broadway Cherry Lane Theater.
But I wonder whether there is a better choice of vehicle out there to deliver Ferguson’s talents to a Broadway audience. Both even started their careers at roughly the same time. There’s even some symmetry between the actor and the play: They are both charming, amiable, and funny in an unthreatening way they both have achieved unexpected success – Fully Committed is frequently performed throughout the country. His well-deserved TV popularity can presumably draw in a crowd, and at the same time he has New York stage experience going back almost 20 years, and continuing even now, regularly playing comic characters in the Public Theater’s summer Shakespeare in the Park productions.
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