NEW YORK — Billy Crystal, a comedic treasure now 74 years old, has aged into the role of Buddy Young Jr., a standup comedian who spent his glory years telling 1950s jokes on his own network show and playing Mister Kelly’s in Chicago, only to fall into the oblivion of playing all-purpose rooms in Florida retirement homes.
When Crystal first took on the fictional character in the self-penned 1992 movie “Mr. Saturday Night,” he did so with the aid of prosthetics. At this juncture, he can draw from what he sees, and surely feels, when he looks in his own unforgiving mirror.
That kind of courageous self-examination, combined with Crystal’s singular talent, impeccable craft and sweet-and-sour gestalt, is a rare thing on today’s youthful, empowerment-crazed Broadway — and bus groups from New Jersey will be lining up at the Nederlander Theater for Borscht Belt-friendly gags tinged with the pain of decline.
“If you’re enjoying the show,” Crystal spits out, evoking the plight of a comic stuck with moribund seniors, “tell your face.”
I scribbled down plenty more in the dark between guffaws: “So the other day my wife says, ‘Buddy, come upstairs and make love to me.’ So I said, ‘Make up your mind — I can’t do both.’”
Or: “You know you’re old when somebody comes up to you and says, ‘I love your alligator shoes.’ And you’re barefoot.”
He’s here all week. Actually, “Mr. Saturday Night,” which opened Wednesday and features a book by Crystal with Lowell Ganz and Babaloo Mandel (fine names for a comedic marquee), music by Jason Robert Brown and lyrics by Amanda Green, surely will be here as long as Crystal cares to stick around.
In an era when shows work like crazy to brand themselves apart from their costly stars, this one remains an old-school vehicle, with Crystal and his struggling character joined at the (artificial) hip.
Indifferent about Crystal? Move on down the street, sucker. Love him? You’re in musical-comedy heaven, to quote the curtain speech at a different Broadway show.
There’s an emphasis on the comedy, though. “Mr. Saturday Night” is something of a reluctant musical, despite the presence of 17 musical numbers and Soshana Bean playing Buddy’s long-suffering daughter, a grown woman still smarting from a father who thought good parenting meant only teaching a kid how to do a neat double-take.
That’s because, the terrific Bean notwithstanding, the show is stocked with comedic players: the superb Randy Graff, who plays Buddy’s supportive spouse, the Linda Loman of this story; and the poignant David Paymer as the self-effacing manager-brother who can never quite get out from under the shadow of his sibling’s ego.
That’s also true of the small ensemble. Jordan Gelber, Brian Gonzales and Mylinda Hull all are funny comics. And Brown and Green have written to their assignment: the songs are witty and droll, but they’re mostly what they used to call speciality numbers and you never entirely feel like they’re integrated into the emotional logic of the whole.
As directed by John Rando, “Mr. Saturday Night” feels more like a play with music: its focus is on the price paid to be funny, a fee not just exacted from the comedian, but also a family. In an ideal world, all of the comedic energy in those routines would flow directly into the songs, making them an organic part of the comedy-pain axis on which this show turns as it probes Buddy’s shifting but perpetually destructive psyche.
But that never entirely happens, partly because the juiciest sections of the show are given over to comedy routines and scenes.
Bean, greatly empathetic and roaring with more musical energy than the show gives her chances to use, cuts through that with the liveliest number of the night: “There’s a Chance,” an assertive song about her desire to get a job, and, symbolically, both escape from and fulfill her dad’s expectations. But the show has a spoken button, which pretty much sums up the aesthetic here.
“It’s in P.R.,” Susan says, after the last note. “Puerto Rico?” retorts her dad, undermining everything, which is kind of the show’s point, except that it also tramples on the song.
None of this matters that much, of course, except for not always exploiting the emotional possibility of songs that actually are already written by Brown and Green, just not always positioned or foregrounded that well in a production that also struggles with its own endlessly eclectic and kinetic design, encumbered by unnecessary video.
More focused moments, like the fine final number “Stick Around” (which states the show’s main thesis), would help “Mr. Saturday Night” exploit all the Broadway musical form it can offer. And I wish the show had more material to offer the agent (Chasten Harmon) who helps Buddy make a comeback.
But there is only so much time. And if you’re in search of hilarity, retro good times and Crystal’s now-precious signature smoothie of affirmation, timing and stark comedic honesty, “Mr. Saturday Night” is your show.
A good time any night of the week, I’ll wager.
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“Mr. Saturday Night” plays on Broadway at the Nederlander Theatre, 208 W. 41st St., New York; mrsaturdaynightonbroadway.com
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