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By Michael Hixon
1 JUNE 2007 |
| One-Man Commitment |
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| Ted Escobar tackles nearly 40 different roles in ‘Fully Committed’ (photos by Alysa Brennan) |
Struggling actor Sam manages reservations at a posh Manhattan restaurant while dealing with a multitude of personalities - divas, mobsters, socialites, the snooty maitre d', a demanding boss - as the phone rings off the hook as he valiantly attempts to go home for Christmas.
“Fully Committed,” the one-man play that opens at the Hermosa Beach Playhouse this week, debuted off-Broadway in 1999. Playing nearly 40 characters in the show, Ted Escobar, who has been the general manager of the Civic Light Opera of South Bay Cities for the past 12 years, seemingly becomes schizophrenic right before the audience's eyes.
“I play men, women, different ethnicities - Asian, Arabian, French - and all I'm basically doing is, I'm taking each character and giving them a different voice and then different characteristics,” said Escobar, who was recently in the CLOSBC production of “Godspell.” “The whole concept of the show is he's working by himself in a basement and he has to answer the phones and his partners don't show up. The first time I answer the phone I say, ‘Reservations, can you hold please?' and right away it's another character. It's developing different voices and different mannerisms and keeping them running through the whole show. Some characters come back and some you never see again. I don't use any kind of hats, glasses, makeup or anything like that. It's just me the whole time. It's crazy, but it's fun. It's literally, ‘Who am I now?'”
Director and associate producer Stephanie Coltrin added, “There's a lot of name-dropping of celebrities. The concept of this show is that it's New York's latest high-end trendy restaurant. They've got celebrities calling in and Becky Mode (writer) did work at one of these kinds of restaurants before she started being a writer. She swears none of the incidents are actually real but you have to wonder sometimes. Like Naomi Campbell's assistant calls with a whole thing about how close her table is to the lighting so it isn't harsh on her face. Anybody who has ever been any kind of receptionist can identify with this.”
Escobar agreed that many in the audience would identify with Sam.
“You start to feel for Sam, this poor guy who has to go through all of this, and you end up rooting for him by the end of the show,” Escobar said. “It's just insane. Anyone who has ever worked in the restaurant industry or any kind of customer service job is going to identify almost immediately with the insanity of what people expect from you on the phone, especially for a restaurant.”
Escobar is very familiar with working in the service industry. When he was 18 years old and working at a fast-food chain, he met CLOSBC founder James Blackman when he was a manager at Carrow's. Years later and after different career changes and moves, the two got reacquainted.
“I came back to see a show in 1995 here, ‘42nd Street' when they did it the first time,” Escobar said. “Sure enough, there he was on the stage and we hadn't seen each other in 10, 15 years. The whole friendship struck up again. He offered me a job and I just left Disneyland at that point. I was a manager there for about eight years. I took a job and I've basically been here ever since.”
Escobar was working the box office at the El Portal Theatre in North Hollywood when “Fully Committed” was running. By the time the run was over, he was quoting lines from the show. “It's an incredible piece of theater for one actor.”
Coltrin said the challenge of “Fully Committed” is in the tiny details and making sure Escobar slips seamlessly from character to character. There are also benefits from this anomaly of a production.
“It's nice because you get to focus all your energy on this one person,” said Coltrin who recently directed “Quilters.” “It's really different because you have to keep the energy of the show up whereas sometimes if you're working on a musical that has 20 people in it, then if somebody's energy lags a little bit, then somebody will pick it up and it will be OK. But here you have to focus everything on this one guy.”
She added, “It's really about doing everything that Ted needs to get the best performance he can get. So whether it's helping him connect the dots about how to remember how to get from each character to the next or whether it's saying ‘You need a break right now, take five minutes.' It's really a lot more energy focused on one person, which is extraordinarily different and it's also different because we don't have dancing. We don't have music. So it's really nice because you can focus completely on the actor and the text.”
With some 30 years of theater experience, Escobar said he is “not nervous about being up there by myself” in a 90-minute show that has no intermissions.
“I'm going to be nervous the first night but that's just the usual butterflies,” he said. “I'm not really concerned. It's not an ego thing. We're working really hard and Stephanie has been a goddess through this whole thing because she's very patient. Sometimes I'm like, ‘I have to go back and do this again. I have to go back and do this again.' I think the hard work is going to pay off so I'm not really concerned. Honestly though, if I mess up there, it's up to me to get myself out of it and in a way that's almost a challenge. If I skip a character, it's up to me. If you've ever been on stage with someone who's forgotten their lines, that's a bigger nightmare than you forgetting a line. Because I've been in that situation where you walk out on stage and someone's supposed to deliver their line and it's not there. That's more embarrassing and confusing and more frustrating then relying on yourself.”
“Fully Committed” runs through June 10 at the Hermosa Beach Playhouse located at the corner of Pier Avenue and Pacific Coast Highway.
The regular schedule is Tuesday through Saturdays at 8 p.m. and Sunday matinees June 3 and 10 at 2 p.m. The show closes Sunday, June 10, with a 7 p.m. show.
For more information, call (310) 372-4477 or visit www.hermosabeachplayhouse.com.
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