The autobiographical solo show has been done to death. Doesn’t matter if it’s a celebrity or an unknown — everybody wants to talk about themselves.
But you have to hand it to Billy Crystal: He has a good story to tell, and he tells it a lot better than most.
Crystal had a huge Tony-winning hit in 2004 with “700 Sundays.”
Now Crystal’s bringing it back for what he says is the last time, directed now, as then, by Des McAnuff (“Jesus Christ Superstar”). You may not want to miss this chance to see a master entertainer ply his trade — not to mention the rare opportunity to relish real, live Catskills humor on Broadway. (Alan Zweibel, one of the original “Saturday Night Live” writers, contributed additional material.)
The title refers to the number of Sundays Crystal got to spend with his father, Jack, who died of a heart attack in 1963, when Billy was 15.
Jack was a busy man who worked long hours at two jobs, so his three sons cherished Sundays, when they could have their dad to themselves. The focus on the family is so tight that David F. Weiner’s set duplicates the front of the Crystals’ home in Long Beach, LI.
Crystal, now a spry 65, pays especially close attention to the happy days he spent in that house, particularly during his adolescence in the late 1950s and early ’60s.
And they were extremely happy days: Except for a single, brief reference to his father having “a bit of a temper,” Jack is clearly Billy’s hero.
Dad worked at a record store on 42nd Street and booked a jazz club at night, so little Billy got to hobnob with some of the era’s greatest musicians. He didn’t just go to the movies: He saw “Shane” sitting on Billie Holiday’s lap.
This sense of living in a golden era extends to everything. Billy didn’t see any old Yankees game: He was there when Mickey Mantle hit a historic home run. And he realized he wanted to be a comedian when he heard the pros at Kutsher’s, the prized buckle of the Borscht Belt.
A nimble physical comedian and a terrific mimic, Crystal not only gives us a hilarious demonstration of Yiddish — “a combination of German and phlegm” — but an indelible imitation of Grandpa Julius, who roamed through the house, farting, like “a free-range Jewish rooster at 6 o’clock in the morning.”
Only a few references seem to have soured with age, like a tired joke about the basketball team of (mostly black) Erasmus Hall HS needing a second bus for the players’ kids.
The whole Erasmus set piece is one of the few funny bits in the second act, which mostly deals with the deaths of his parents — mom Helen passed away after a stroke in 2001. It’s all heartfelt but a little maudlin.
This is frustrating since the show’s first half is a master class in pacing and storytelling. There, Crystal perfectly segues from laughs to sentiment and back again. We’re putty in his expert hands — and that’s the memory we’ll take with us.