Billy Crystal‘s career, from his catch-a-rising-star stand-up days of the 1970s, his groundbreaking role as TV’s first regular-cast gay character on the sitcom Soap and through his years as both a top Hollywood director and what many consider the greatest host in Oscar history, gets a fine, funny and emotional telling in 860, Crystal’s new solo show opening tonight on Broadway.
And if the fact that it’s Crystal himself performing the career retrospective that most stars don’t live to see, the show quickly dissipates any notion of self-congratulations or back-patting: Crystal is the sort of comic who can infuse his material with just the right amount of self-deprecation to seem like something of an underdog in life’s kennel, a pretty impressive feat given the man’s charmed life.
Well, charmed from the outside. Taking its title from the street address of Crystal’s longtime Pacific Palisades home, where the comedian raised his two daughters with wife Janice and where, in his home office, he kept a lifetime of treasured keepsakes, 860, smoothly directed by Scott Ellis, begins in tragedy: The home was destroyed in the apocalyptic 2025 Palisades wildfires, incinerating decades-worth of career mementos, cherished childhood touchstones and the relics of a past that marked the many friendships and family moments that are a source of emotional grounding for a sentimental pack-rat like Crystal.
In fact, it’s that sentimentality that goes a long way in heading off potential audience resistance. Crystal is, after all, a wealthy, heavily insured man, and a focus on the loss of stuff – none of his family or friends were injured in the blaze – could, in less skilled hands, be more than a little off-putting.
But Crystal uses these lost objects the way Proust pondered a madeleine, as a vibe-inducing cue that can transport him – and, with him as our guide, us – back to the highlights of a life filled with many. And since we’ve all borne witness to so many this star’s transformational moments both public and private, we can’t help being moved by the poignance of the nostalgia offered up from stage of the Imperial Theatre.
With a set design by Tony winner Scott Pask that recreates Crystal’s now-lost sanctum sanctorum down to the framed photos of dear friends and co-stars past, and baseball memorabilia from his own childhood mitt to equipment autographed by Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig and Ted Williams and Joe DiMaggio. Jen Schriever’s lighting design makes sure we’re looking at the right spot at the right time, and video work – old home movies, classic performance clips – by Hana S. Kim and Kylee Loera is emotionally transporting and plot-moving in equal measure.
Those videos (along with the sound design by Dan Moses Schreier) take us right back to a past that can be terrifying (news and personal footage of the fires), hilarious (a clip from Soap reminds us of just what a jewel we had in Katherine Helmond) and heart-tugging (the moment when Crystal was briefly caught off guard by the surprise appearance of his friend Muhammad Ali onto the stage of an early HBO comedy special. Pure gold).
As helpful as all the film evidence is, Crystal, if need would ever be, could do without it: This is a performer whose early skills for mimicry and delivering a punch line have, if it’s even possible, sharpened over the decades. His recreation of the career-making ’70s routine in which he plays both parts of a ringside conversation between Ali and sportscaster-nemesis Howard Cosell is as uncanny as ever, and his recollection of an early-career spot as the opening act for Blood, Sweat and Tears works even if you’ve never heard of David Clayton-Thomas or “Spinning Wheel.”
The show business highlights are here, of course. There’s the “You look marvelous” era of Saturday Night Live, his Hannibal Lecter Oscar-host entrance, late-night guest appearances, City Slickers, When Harry Met Sally, and even, as if to demonstrate the play’s expanse, a quick mention of his film debut in Joan Rivers’ dismal Rabbit Test, “the worst movie ever made,” as its star recalls.
Lots of these career milestones are, in hindsight, bittersweet, as such memories tend to be. The 1986 Comic Relief fundraiser stirs recollections of his great friend Robin Williams and the toll of that death, and his love of baseball is inextricably tied to the father he lost as a teenager.
But no other moments in the show cut as close to the bone as the recollections of Crystal’s longtime best friend, Rob Reiner. He first broaches the subject in a roundabout fashion, paying tribute to Norman Lear, the groundbreaking TV producer who saw a young Crystal perform at the Comedy Store and hired him to play the best friend of Reiner’s Michael Stivic in an episode of All in the Family. Addressing Lear directly, Crystal says, “You told me, ‘I think you two will be great together,'” then adds, after a recap of This is Spinal Tap, The Princess Bride and When Harry Met Sally, “So that’s why I wanted to thank Norman Lear. Unknowingly, he made it possible to have the friend of a lifetime.”
Crystal, inevitably, circles back to Reiner, saying about the Palisades fire, as if warning the audience of rough times ahead, “2025 was the worst year of our lives. We couldn’t imagine anything worse than our house burning down. But then on December 14th, there was a phone call.” In a flash, “the unimaginable became reality.”
While 860 doesn’t ignore its creator’s lows, Crystal is too much the entertainer to leave the stage without some light and hope. There’s a sweet moment when he, grieving the loss of his friend, recalls some inspirational words from Ali, something getting back up when you’re knocked down, and the comic takes it to heart. And there are a few objects that, against all odds, survive the blaze, though by the end of 860 we know Crystal could do just fine without stuff.
Title: 860
Venue: Broadway’s Imperial Theatre
Written And Performed By: Billy Crystal
Directed By: Scott Ellis
Running Time: 1 hr 35 min (no intermission)