Veteran comic Buddy Young, Jr, the central character played by Billy Crystal in Mr. Saturday Night, has more than his share of catchphrases. There’s “Don’t get me started,” which he used to say to his audience when he had his own prime-time television show. There’s “Hurt them,” which he repeats to himself as a mantra before going onstage. And most often, there’s “See what I did there?” which he slyly asks friends and family members every time he throws in an unexpected joke. Unfortunately, what this new musical version of Crystal’s not-so-successful 1992 film needs is less catchphrases and more memorable songs.
It’s hard to believe we’re living through a conservation crisis, when so much familiar material is recycled into generic Broadway musicals. Crystal, who had a triumph on Broadway with his Tony Award-winning autobiographical solo show 700 Sundays, obviously has a soft spot for this tale about a washed-up comedian still desperate to make people laugh. He directed and starred in the film, which he co-wrote with Lowell Ganz and Babaloo Mandel of Splash, Parenthood, City Slickers and A League of Their Own fame. He and the veteran comedy writers have reunited for this new musicalization, which also features David Paymer, repeating the role of Buddy’s aggrieved brother and business manager that won him an Oscar nomination. But there’s nothing about the musical that displays a reason for being, other than to showcase its star’s extraordinary comic chops.
[Read David Finkle’s ★★★☆☆ review here.]
Not that it’s necessarily a bad reason. Crystal, a direct stylistic descendant of the legendary Borscht Belt comedians who so clearly inspired him, has the sort of pitch-perfect timing and delivery that can make practically any joke funny. This show has plenty of them, a non-stop barrage of hilarious one-liners, many of them defiantly politically incorrect (but not too offensive) that will have audiences of a certain age and (dare I say it?) a certain ethnicity, laughing non-stop.
The problem is that the jokes inevitably give way to formulaic dramatic scenes, many involving Buddy’s strained relationship with his grown daughter (Shoshana Bean). Even worse, they give way to songs, way too many songs, with music by Jason Robert Brown and lyrics by Amanda Green, that repeatedly stop the show. Not in a good way, mind you, but rather dead in its tracks. Imagine Bob Hope singing “Thanks for the Memory” not at the end of his stand-up act but rather every 7-10 minutes throughout, and you get the idea.
Crystal and his writing collaborators have done their best to make the original story more palatable to Broadway audiences, softening the central character into less of an obnoxious jerk than he was onscreen. But everyone involved seems to be doing too much heavy lifting: Crystal, carrying the weight of the show on his shoulders (it’s hard to imagine anyone else playing the role); Paymer, who really can’t sing, but has deadpan perfected to an art form; Bean, saddled with weak material; Randy Graff, wonderfully appealing as Buddy’s wife; Chasten Harmon, in the thankless role of Buddy’s new young agent whose name he keeps forgetting (one of the weaker running gags); and Jordan Gelber, Brian Gonzalez and Mylinda Hull, heroically faced with the task of playing what seems like dozens of supporting characters and scoring laughs throughout.
The original movie ran an overlong 119 minutes, and the show is even longer — two hours and forty-five minutes, a running time more suited to musicals about French revolutions and opera house-haunting phantoms. Brown, working more in his Honeymoon in Vegas than Bridges of Madison Country style, has contributed 17 songs, absolutely none of which are memorable, and which aren’t helped by the stars’ voices (serviceable at best) or the wan arrangements for the orchestra numbering a mere six musicians. Green’s lyrics are occasionally amusing, but lean too heavily on such Yiddish-infused rhymes as “My opening act was Eddie Fisher/Now I should take advice from this pisher?” and “Everybody’s acting like an asshole/Yet somehow it turns out to be my fault/Oy gevalt!” (If this show had commercials, they would be for Manischewitz.)
But, and it’s a very big but, none of this will matter to Crystal fans, as everyone should be. The 74-year-old performer displays the vitality of someone half his age, his energy fueled by the waves of audience laughter cascading over the footlights. It’s a treat to see him up close and personal as he works his tuchus off (the Yiddishisms prove infectious) to entertain us. Mr. Saturday Night would prove an absolute triumph for him…as long as you eliminated the plot, the supporting characters, and the musical numbers.
You see what I did there?
