In his review of the 1986 buddy comedy Running Scared, Roger Ebert wrote that Billy Crystal and Gregory Hines, the film’s leads, “don’t need a plot because they have so much good dialogue and such a great screen relationship”. With a bit of paraphrasing, Ebert’s description of that chemistry works just the same when discussing Crystal’s relationship to the New York stage, where the legendary funnyman has made a cozy home for himself this century.
His 2004 one-man show 700 Sundays won a special Tony and was brought back nearly a decade later to be filmed for HBO. Then came Mr Saturday Night in 2022, which Crystal adapted from an earlier movie and which was tepidly, politely received. Still, most agreed there is little that Crystal’s born charisma can’t overcome, and he scored a Tony nomination for best actor.
