Every town seems to have its local clown, and in Milwaukee, there's no competition for this honor. It belongs to John McGivern, a crew cut-wearing, gap-toothed, 50ish-looking guy that everyone seems to love. Although he's a Milwaukee favorite, McGivern is no slouch on the national scene. He has been featured in the film, "The Princess Diaries" and has appeared on TV's "Comedy Central" and an HBO special. All this matters little to his Milwaukee fans, who'd love him even if he never left the neighborhood.
McGivern currently appears in the silly but sentimental one-act play, Fully Committed. The play's title references a term apparently used in fancy New York restaurants to indicate that they're filled for the evening. "We're all booked tonight" is what McGivern unthinkingly utters before he's reminded by the management to get with the program.
The play pokes fun at big-city folks, which is especially hilarious to small-town Midwesterners. McGivern plays Sam, an out-of-work New York actor who has a "day job" taking reservations for a four-star restaurant. In a performance that's exhausting to watch, McGivern plays more than 40 characters. These range from the predictable (a finicky French chef) to the more predictable (someone with Mafia connections). McGivern is a stitch as he believably creates this multitude of characters, whether straight or gay, male or female, rich or wanna-be, Jewish or Hungarian. Some of his most poignant "conversations" (since he creates both characters) are between Sam and his widowed, elderly father, who lives in South Bend, Ind. Dad wants to know if Sam will be home for Christmas. This presents one of many dilemmas Sam must resolve.
All of this takes place in the restaurant's cluttered, filthy rat hole of a basement (it looks like a large version of a janitor's closet.) Fully Committed is well worth a look, if only to see McGivern in his prime.
