If you’ve ever tried to get a reservation at a trendy and booked-ahead restaurant, you’ve talked to someone like Sam, the underpaid and overworked slave who takes phone reservations and tries to explain to irate customers that they can’t get a table for another few months.

The enormously talented David McBean is Sam, the play is Becky Mode’s hilarious one-man, one-act Fully Committed, and the venue is the new Cygnet Theatre. The theater’s artistic director, Sean Murray, directs.

And the calls! Poor Sam sits at the phone, assaulted all day by the likes of the snooty Mrs. Vandevere, who gets a hard-to-get table because her husband “invented Saran Wrap or something,” and supermodel Naomi Campbell’s crowd that wants an all-vegan tasting menu, and by the way can she send someone to change the light bulbs, as the restaurant’s aren’t sufficiently flattering, and the insistent Mrs. Fishburne who wants, well, her way (and to whom maitre d’ Jean-Claude, with thick French accent, refuses to speak because “she is soooo ugly).” Not to mention the Mafioso who wants a waiter to sing “The Lady is a Tramp” at his parents’ anniversary dinner, and the persistent “senior citizen” who wants her AARP discount.

On this particular day, the reservations manager has not arrived, nor has anyone else who can help poor Sam, in need of octopus arms and several more heads than he has to answer all these calls.

Now and then Sam’s good old dad calls from Indiana, wanting to know his Christmas plans, and so does “friend” and fellow aspiring actor Jerry, who wants to report that he got not only a final callback, but also a Taco Bell spot, prompting Sam to call his agent.

McBean is remembered for several spectacular recent characterizations, including Miss Deep South in North Coast Rep’s Pageant, Nicodemus, et al., in The Mystery of Irma Vep, Chicklet in Psycho Beach Party, and Harold in Boys in the Band at Diversionary Theatre. But he outdoes himself here, hurtling through lightning character changes with nary a glitch, changing genders, accents and attitudes in a split second.

In the program notes Murray asserts that, based on his years in the restaurant industry in New York, this play paints an accurate picture. In fact, Murray thinks the play is about the restaurant he worked in: Stephanie’s on the Upper East Side.

Whether it is or isn’t, anyone who has worked in a restaurant (or even been to one) will recognize many of these people. Do yourself a favor and get a reservation. Hurry, before it’s “fully committed.”

Fully Committed runs through Feb. 29: Thurs-Sat. at 8:00 p.m.; Sun. at 7:00 p.m. and matinees on Feb. 1, 15 and 29 at 2:00 p.m. For tickets, call (619) 337-1525.