860
Known to fans everywhere as a stand-up comic, an acclaimed tv, film, and stage star, and nine-time host of the Oscars and three-time host of the Grammys, Emmy and Tony winner Billy Crystal is now back on Broadway. His latest award-worthy work, 860, plays an extended engagement at the Imperial Theatre.
Brilliantly written and performed, with a full range of relatable emotions and his signature razor-sharp humor, 860 is a densely packed, rapid-fire, autobiographical solo show. In it, Crystal offers a deeply personal reflection on the most memorable moments of his life and career, time spent with his beloved family and famous friends, and their connections to the home he lived in for 47 years.
Located at 860 Chautauqua Blvd. in LA’s Pacific Palisades, his longtime residence, and almost everything in it, burned to the ground in the California wildfires of January 2025. In December of that same year, Rob and Michele Reiner, Crystal’s closest friends, were murdered. Those two devastating tragedies serve as the framework for his intimate and resilient first-person account of love and loss, and how the power of joyful memories and laughter got him through the unimaginable heartbreak.
The artistic design is of paramount importance to Crystal’s one-man show of shared reminiscences. Under the direction of Scott Ellis, he moves around the stage, on and off a stool, in a recreation of his home office (set by Scott Pask). It’s hung with countless framed photographs and posters and filled with his awards and other vintage objects and memorabilia from his past that evoke happy and touching anecdotes about what they mean to him and how he came to acquire them. They include a seat from Yankee Stadium and how he got to know his longtime idol, baseball legend Mickey Mantle.
He is also surrounded by changing large-scale video images on the back and side walls of the people and places he loves and recalls in his stories (video design by Hana S. Kim and Kylee Loera). He speaks of his childhood, youth, and beginnings in show biz at the comedy clubs of New York. He relates his move to LA and the history of 860 and its original vaudeville-star owners; he talks lovingly of Janice, his wife of 56 years, and their two daughters, Jenny and Lindsay, who helped him immeasurably through the profound grief of losing their home. Mostly, he highlights his burgeoning career in NYC and LA –from the sitcom Soap, to his stint on SNL, and his many popular movies — and even a gig as the opening act for a Blood, Sweat & Tears concert in Pennsylvania (his imitation of lead singer David Clayton-Thomas is hilarious).
Along with a funny and affecting segment on his professional and personal relationship with Reiner (with sidesplitting clips from the rom-com film When Harry Met Sally, in which Crystal starred with Meg Ryan and Reiner directed), he discusses his connections with Muhammad Ali, Robin Williams, Howard Cosell, and Martin Scorsese, and does spot-on impersonations of all of them. And he does it with a seamless blend of laugh-out-loud comedy, poignant grief, and full-out humanity that elicits both sincere empathy and thunderous laughs from the audience.
Crystal’s stellar performance is enhanced with original music and adaptations of songs from the period (by Marc Shaiman), shifts in lighting that set the mood (by Jen Schriever), and sound (by Dan Moses Schreier), with voiceovers of news reports on the destructive fire, the alarms and sirens it triggered, and the strong winds that spread it.
Now 78, Crystal recognizes that his time is limited, but he will, as he’s always done, live it with laughter. That message is one that miraculously survived the burning of 860, making him wonder, if that, and other happy accidents in his life and career, were luck or fate. And it helped him to decide that, when the time comes, he most definitely will NOT be cremated – another example of his incisive, uproarious comedy and his masterful ability to share it with others.
860
At the Imperial Theatre
249 West 45th St.
Running time: 95 minutes, no intermission
Through February 14, 2027
