this week in broadway

COST OF LIVING

Eddie (David Zayas) and Ani (Katy Sullivan) face adversity in Cost of Living (photo © Jeremy Daniel)

COST OF LIVING
Samuel J. Friedman Theatre
261 West Forty-Seventh St. between Broadway & Eighth Ave.
Tuesday – Sunday through November 6, $74-$298
www.manhattantheatreclub.com

When I saw Manhattan Theatre Club’s production of Martyna Majok’s Cost of Living at New York City Center’s Stage I five and a half years ago, I did not anticipate that it would win the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. I also never imagined that the show, which I called “a tender, emotional play about four lonely people seeking connections,” would eventually transfer to Broadway. But Cost of Living has made a terrific transition to MTC’s Samuel J. Friedman Theatre, with all its tenderness, emotion — and sense of humor — fully intact. In fact, it is now even better.

The play is once again directed by Obie winner Jo Bonney on Wilson Chin’s set, which rotates between the homes of John (Gregg Mozgala), a Harvard grad working on his PhD at Princeton and confined to a wheelchair with cerebral palsy, and Ani (Katy Sullivan), a quadriplegic also in a wheelchair.

While John is looking for a caregiver and interviews and hires Jess (Kara Young), a Princeton grad scrambling to make a living by working multiple jobs and who assures John that despite her slight build she can handle his needs, Ani initially refuses help from her ex-husband, Eddie (David Zayas), a former truck driver with a new girlfriend.

The play opens with Eddie sitting at a bar, talking to an unseen person in what is essentially a long, compelling monologue delivered directly to the audience. “The shit that happens is not to be understood. That’s from the Bible,” he says. “That life is good for people. I was thankful for every day they ain’t invented yet the trucker-robots. That life is good. The road. Sky. The scenery. Except the loneliness. Except in the case of all the, y’know, loneliness. This was what my wife was good for. Not that this was the only thing.”

John (Gregg Mozgala) and Jess (Kara Young) come to an agreement in Cost of Living (photo © Jeremy Daniel)

The loneliness and vulnerability experienced by all four characters is palpable, expressed most effectively in scenes of back-to-back caretaking. In the first, Jess washes John in the shower, moving him out of his chair and then back into it, followed by Eddie giving Ani a bath.

Describing his sensations, John tells Jess that his body feels as if he’s constantly under attack. “That’s what it’s like. Under my skin. From underneath my skin. Like people hitting me from beneath my skin. And that’s what you’ll be working with. Every morning. Is touching, shaving, undressing, washing, and clothing — that. That’s what I’m like.”

Meanwhile, Eddie visits Ani on a day her nurse hasn’t shown up, so Eddie asks Ani to hire him instead. “What do you think’s gonna happen you come take care of me a few hours a day? Huh?” she spurts out. “You brush my teeth a couple mornings, dump my bedpan a few times, and BOOM, conscience — fuck-shit, clap yer hands when I say Boom. . . . Yer not doin’ penance on me.”

The separate storylines merge at the end in an uneasy finale that acknowledges that we all encounter tremendously painful issues in life, regardless of our physical or psychological situations, which is further established during the curtain call.

Both Mozgala (Teenage Dick, Diagnosis of a Faun), who has cerebral palsy, and Sullivan (The Long Red Road, Finish Line), who was born without lower legs, return from the original cast, and both give intense, superb performances again, neither one pulling any punches. Young (Clyde’s, Halfway Bitches Go to Heaven) displays a tenacious fragility as Jess, who might be getting in over her head, while Zayas (Dexter, Anna in the Tropics) proves once more that he is one of New York City’s finest actors, balancing toughness with a sweet gentleness that shines through. Jeff Croiter’s lighting and Rob Kaplowitz’s sound capture the pervasive loneliness playing out onstage.

“Self-pity has little currency in these characters’ worlds. Humor, however, has much,” Majok (Ironbound, Sanctuary City) explains in a script note. Her and Bonney’s (Father Comes Home from the Wars, Fucking A) approach feels honest and unambiguous, as summarized in this exchange between Jess and John:

Jess: Sorry, I never worked with the, differently-abled —
John: Don’t do that.
Jess: What?
John: Don’t call it that.
Jess: Why, I —
John: Don’t call it differently-abled.
Jess: Shit, is that not the right term?
John: It’s fucking retarded. . . .
Jess: So what do I, how do I, refer to you?
John: Are you planning on talking about me?
Jess: No.
John: Why not? I’m very interesting.

The Broadway debut of Cost of Living, which was expanded from Majok’s 2015 short play John, Who’s Here from Cambridge, is a lot more than interesting, and you’ll be sure to be talking about it long after seeing it.

BOOK LAUNCH: TRANSFORMING SPACE OVER TIME

Who: Beowulf Boritt, James Lapine, Susan Stroman, Elliott Forrest
What: Book launch
Where: The Drama Book Shop, 266 West Thirty-Ninth St. between Eighth & Ninth Aves.
When: Tuesday, October 11, $35 (includes copy of book), 7:00
Why: “My goal is to couple thematically evocative visuals with a considered transformation of the physical space as the story plays out. Set design is a kinetic sculpture that is constantly being manipulated to enhance the emotions and narrative of the story: transforming space over time. Thematic evocation and spatial transformation are my tools to create an intellectual concept to guide the scenery and support the story. Once that concept is clear in my mind, I can envision the style of the set: literally, what it will look like. When the process goes well, the frosting really does enhance the cake.”

So writes Tony- and Obie-winning set designer extraordinaire Beowulf Boritt in his new book, Transforming Space Over Time: Set Design and Visual Storytelling with Broadway’s Legendary Directors (Globe Pequot / Applause, August 2022, $34.95). The tome features conversations between Boritt (Act One, The Scottsboro Boys, The Last Five Years) and six theater greats he has worked with either on Broadway or off: James Lapine, Kenny Leon, Hal Prince, Susan Stroman, Jerry Zaks, and Stephen Sondheim. The book is a celebration of the art of creation and collaboration; it will have its launch October 11 at 7:00 at the Drama Book Shop, where Boritt will be joined by Lapine, Stroman, and Peabody-winning moderator Elliott Forrest. Tickets are limited and include a copy of the book.

THEATER TALKS — DEATH OF A SALESMAN: A CONVERSATION WITH WENDELL PIERCE, SHARON D. CLARKE, ANDRÉ DE SHIELDS, AND MIRANDA CROMWELL

Who: Wendell Pierce, Sharon D. Clarke, André De Shields, Miranda Cromwell, Salamishah Tillet
What: Panel discussion on new Death of a Salesman revival
Where: Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture (NYPL), 515 Malcolm X Blvd., and online
When: Monday, October 3, free with RSVP, 7:00
Why: Lee J. Cobb, George C. Scott, Dustin Hoffman, Brian Dennehy, and Philip Seymour Hoffman have all starred as Willy Loman in Broadway productions of Arthur Miller’s Pulitzer Prize–winning 1949 American classic, Death of a Salesman. You can now add to that prestigious list Wendell Pierce, in the latest Broadway revival, now in previews for an October 9 opening at the Hudson Theatre. The cast features Pierce and Sharon D. Clarke as Willy’s wife, Linda — both won Oliviers for their performances in the West End production — along with André De Shields as Ben, Khris Davis as Biff, and McKinley Belcher III as Happy, the first all-Black Loman family on the Great White Way.

On October 3 at 7:00, Pierce (The Wire, The Piano Lesson), Clarke (Holby City, Caroline, or Change), and Tony and Emmy winner De Shields (Hadestown, The Full Monty) will be joined by director Miranda Cromwell (Magic Elves, Pigeon English) and moderator and Pulitzer Prize winner Salamishah Tillet for a discussion at the NYPL’s Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture; presented in conjunction with the 92nd St. Y’s Unterberg Poetry Center, the free event is being held in person and online, and advance registration is required. “So many of the elements of the play are fundamentally questioning of the American dream, and when you put that through the perspective of the Black experience, that enriches it,” Cromwell said in a statement. “The obstacles are harder, the stakes become higher.”

TOM STOPPARD IN CONVERSATION WITH DANIEL KEHLMANN

Who: Tom Stoppard, Daniel Kehlmann
What: Conversations & Performances discussion
Where: Unterberg Poetry Center, 92nd St. Y, Kaufmann Concert Hall, 92Y online
When: Sunday, September 18, in person $15-$31, online $20, 4:30
Why: “Anti-Semitism is a political fact. It’s a bit soon for it to be a party platform, but when it is there will be Austrians to vote for it,” a character states in Tom Stoppard’s new Olivier Award–winning play, Leopoldstadt, which opens October 2 at the Longacre Theatre on Broadway. On September 18, Stoppard will be at the 92nd St. Y to inaugurate the eighty-fourth anniversary of the Unterberg Poetry Center — a year younger than he is — to discuss the play, which was partly inspired by his family history. The British playwright and screenwriter will be joined by German and Austrian author and translator Daniel Kehlmann, who has written such novels as You Should Have Left, Tyll, and Fame and translated Leopoldstadt into German.

Stoppard, born Tomáš Sträussler in 1937 in what is now the Czech Republic, is arguably the greatest living playwright of the last sixty years; his works include Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, Travesties, The Real Thing, Arcadia, The Invention of Love, and The Coast of Utopia, earning four Tonys and two Oliviers for Best Play. Sir Thomas has also won a Best Original Screenplay Oscar for Shakespeare in Love. His latest play, his most personal, begins in Vienna in 1899, in the Jewish quarter known as Leopoldstadt, and features more than three dozen characters; directed by Tony and Oscar nominee Patrick Marber (Closer, Notes on a Scandal), it is currently scheduled to run through January 29, 2023.

INTO THE WOODS

Into the Woods features a dazzling all-star cast with superstar understudies (photo by Matthew Murphy and Evan Zimmerman)

INTO THE WOODS
St. James Theatre
246 West Forty-Fourth St.
Tuesday – Sunday through January 8, $69-$159
intothewoodsbway.com

At intermission of the spectacular revival of Into the Woods, I was heading outside for a breath of fresh air when I saw a notice posted on the doors that the show was not yet over, that there was a second act. At first I wondered who would leave the theater at this point, but then I thought about how nearly perfect the first act was, how everything seemed to be wrapped up in a neat little package, with everybody onstage and in the audience elated and satisfied.

But in James Lapine and Stephen Sondheim’s devilishly clever show, “happily ever after” is a misnomer, more of a warning than a coda. As the Narrator (David Patrick Kelly) had ominously just informed us, “To. Be. Continued.” Everyone’s jubilation is about to come tumbling down, like a giant falling from the sky — although one can find plenty of exhilaration in the dark side as well.

Inspired by Bruno Bettelheim’s 1976 Freudian book The Uses of Enchantment: The Meaning and Importance of Fairy Tales, Lapine and Sondheim’s musical debuted at San Diego’s Old Globe in 1986 and moved to Broadway the following year, earning ten Tony nominations and winning three, losing the Best Musical award to The Phantom of the Opera. This new version, which premiered at New York City Center’s “Encores!” series in May, has made a super-smooth transition to the St. James, maintaining its brilliant streamlined adaptation.

The nearly-three-hour show, which has been extended through October 16, is a mashup of fairytale favorites with some added central characters. The stage is dominated by a fifteen-piece orchestra conducted by Rob Berman, who leads the musicians through Sondheim’s complicated, unpredictable score. The actors spend most of the show on a narrow, horizontal section at the front of the stage, with minimal props, highlighted by miniature versions of their forest homes dangling from the ceiling, teasingly just out of reach. In addition, they occasionally wander through the orchestra, running around and hiding behind white birch trees that have come down from above.

The story is built around three wishes. Cinderella (Phillipa Soo) is suffering through a miserable existence, terrorized by her stepmother (Nancy Opel) and stepsisters, Florinda (Brooke Ishibashi) and Lucinda (Ta’Nika Gibson), while her father (Albert Guerzon) offers her no support. “I wish to go to the festival — and the ball . . . more than anything,” Cinderella sings, referring to a grand party being thrown by the handsome prince (Gavin Creel).

Jack (Cole Thompson, although I saw Alex Joseph Grayson) and his mother (Aymee Garcia) are worried that they might lose their farm, so the mother sends Jack off to sell his beloved old and ragged cow, Milky White (Kennedy Kanagawa). “I wish my cow would give us some milk, more than anything,” Jack croons.

And the Baker (Brian D’Arcy James; I saw Jason Forbach) and his wife (Sara Bareilles) are desperate to have a baby. “I wish . . . more than the moon . . . more than life . . . I wish we might have a child,” the couple, invented for the show, opine.

Milky White (Kennedy Kanagawa) sits in the back as the Baker (Brian D’Arcy James) and his wife (Sara Bareilles) come up with a plan (photo by Matthew Murphy and Evan Zimmerman)

Other familiar and new characters also show up in the threatening forest. Little Red Ridinghood (Julia Lester; I saw Delphi Borich) stops at the bakery to bring some treats to her granny (Annie Golden) but better be aware of the hungry Wolf (Creel). “Into the woods / to bring some bread / to Granny who / is sick in bed. / Never can tell / what lies ahead. / For all I know, she’s already dead,” Red declares. Rapunzel (Alysia Velez) has been locked up in a tower, where another handsome prince (Joshua Henry) seeks to rescue her. A Mysterious Man (Kelly) pops up from time to time, telling riddles and positing, “When first I appear, I seem delirious. But when explained, I am nothing serious.”

Everything is set in motion by the Witch (Patina Miller), who lives next door to the Baker and his wife. She had cursed the Baker’s family — which includes the sister he never knew he had, named Rapunzel — deeming it impossible for them to have children, but she now offers to reverse it in exchange for “the cow as white as milk,” “the cape as red as blood,” “the hair as yellow as corn,” and “the slipper as pure as gold.” She promises, “Bring me these / before the chime / of midnight / in three days’ time, / and you shall have, / I guarantee, / a child as perfect / as child can be. / Go to the wood!”

And off they go, into the woods, where they have to determine how far to compromise their morals in order to acquire the four elements that will allow them to finally have a baby. These decisions ring true with audience members, who, in our own lives, regularly face ethical decisions. “Into the woods / without regret, / the choice is made, / the task is set,” the Baker, his wife, Cinderella, Jack, and Jack’s mother sing in unison. “Into the woods / to get my (our) wish, / I don’t care how, / the time is now.”

But when a widowed Giant (voiced by Golden) comes down from her haven in the sky to avenge her husband’s death, everyone’s future is destined to not be so happy after all.

In the last ten years, I’ve seen two previous adaptations of Into the Woods, from the Public Theater at the Delacorte in 2012 and Fiasco Theater for Roundabout at the Laura Pels in 2015. Both were lovely, memorable productions that were very different from each other but thoroughly satisfying in their unique approaches to a beloved musical.

First-time Broadway director Lear deBessonet (Pump Boys and Dinettes, transFigures), the head of Encores! and the founder of Public Works, and choreographer Lorin Latarro (Fiasco’s Merrily We Roll Along, Assassins for Encores!), expertly guide the actors across the stage, up and down the handful of steps, and through the trees, making the most of the tight quarters; the charming scenic design is by David Rockwell, with lighting by Tyler Micoleau, sound by Scott Lehrer and Alex Neumann, and lovely music direction by Rob Berman. The tasty costumes are by Andrea Hood, with hair, wig, and makeup design by the extraordinary Cookie Jordan.

The Wolf (Gavin Creel) has an evil plan in store for Little Red Ridinghood (Julia Lester) (photo by Matthew Murphy and Evan Zimmerman)

The cast is a true ensemble; several friends and colleagues saw different actors in key roles than I did, and everyone raved about them all, whether the understudy or the award-winning star. But two performers do stand out.

Miller brings down the house when she belts out “Last Midnight,” driving the crowd into a frenzy as she cries out, “It’s the last midnight, / it’s the last verse. / Now, before it’s past midnight, / I’m leaving you my last curse: / I’m leaving you alone.” Miller won a Tony as Leading Player in Diane Paulus’s 2013 Broadway revival of Pippin, but I missed her when I went; I instead saw the wonderful Stephanie Pope, who has had quite a career of her own.

But Kanagawa nearly steals the show as Milky White. Puppet designer James Ortiz (2022 Drama Desk Award winner for Best Puppet Design for The Skin of Our Teeth) has created a tender and fragile cow out of cardboard — part Slinky, part accordion — operated by Kanagawa, who had never worked with puppets before. He masterfully moves Milky White as the cow’s destiny is threatened, making sure we feel every emotion in her static foam eyes, from joy to sadness, as if it were a living creature in front of us. It’s a bravura performance that is receiving Tony buzz.

“If we hope to live not just from moment to moment, but in true consciousness of our existence, then our greatest need and most difficult achievement is to find meaning in our lives,” Bettelheim writes in the introduction of The Uses of Enchantment. “Our positive feelings give us the strength to develop our rationality; only hope for the future can sustain us in the adversities we unavoidably encounter.”

This latest adaptation of Into the Woods zeroes in on how Lapine’s book and Sondheim’s music and lyrics form a fairy tale for both kids and adults, about human beings’ instinctual desires, alongside their darkest fears. And don’t worry about the second act; it turns out that happily ever after is always within reach.

THE KITE RUNNER

Amir (Amir Arison) reads a story to Hassan (Eric Sirakian) in The Kite Runner (photo by Joan Marcus)

THE KITE RUNNER
Hayes Theater
240 West 44th St.
Tuesday – Sunday through October 30, $69-$199
thekiterunnerbroadway.com

The third time is not a charm for The Kite Runner.

Khaled Hosseini’s bestselling 2003 debut novel sold more than seven million copies in the United States. Director Marc Foster and screenwriter David Benioff’s 2007 film version was nominated for two Golden Globes, including Best Foreign Language Film, and for a Best Original Score Oscar. But Matthew Spangler’s 2009 theatrical adaptation, which opened July 21 at the Hayes Theater on Broadway, fails to live up to the promise of its forebears, rarely taking flight.

The play begins in San Francisco in 2001, with Amir (Amir Arison) explaining to the audience, “I became what I am today at the age of twelve. I remember the precise moment, crouching behind a mud wall on a frigid winter day in 1975 . . . peeking into a deserted alley. It’s wrong what they say about the past, about how you can bury it, because the past claws its way out.” For more than two and a half hours (plus intermission), Amir serves as both narrator and character, portraying himself from an Afghan child in 1973 to an adult in California. The story is told in scenes that are treated like individual set pieces that often merely depict what Amir has already described instead of offering more; when he is not in the scene itself, he is an observer, not taking action, which becomes the core of the plot.

The young Amir lives in Kabul with his father, Baba (Faran Tahir), a proud, moralistic, successful merchant; Amir’s mother died in childbirth, and he hasn’t remarried. Baba’s longtime devoted servant, Ali (Evan Zes), stays in a shack on the estate with his young son, Hassan (Eric Sirakian), who spends most of his time playing with Amir; Ali’s wife ran off with a troupe of actors and musicians years before. Amir and Hassan can’t necessarily be called friends because as Sunni Muslims and members of the Pashtun ethnic group, Amir and Baba are of higher status than Ali and Hassan, who are ethnic Hazaras and Shi’a.

Hassan loves listening to Amir reading stories to him, primarily from Ferdowsi’s tenth-century Persian epic poem Shahnamah; Amir wants to become a poet himself, which angers his father, who wants a tough, athletic son who can defend himself against bullies. “Real men don’t read poetry, and they certainly don’t write it! Real men play soccer, just like I did when I was your age!” Baba bellows. Baba tells his business partner, Ramir Khan (Dariush Kashani), “A boy who won’t stand up for himself becomes a man who can’t stand up to anything.”

Amir is determined to win the annual winter kite-fighting tournament, in which contestants try to cut the lines of everyone else’s kites, then have their runner track down the final fallen kite. Amir is one of the best kite cutters, but Hassan, who is devoted to Amir, is considered the greatest kite runner around. At the end of the competition, Hassan, in possession of the last kite, is confronted by neighborhood bully Assef (Amir Malaklou) and his cohorts, Wali (Danish Farooqui) and Kamal (Beejan Land). Ali demands that Hassan hand over the kite, but the young boy refuses, determined to bring it to Amir no matter the cost. As Assef commits a horrific act against Hassan, Amir watches, doing nothing, then runs away. “I ran as fast as I could. I ran all the way home,” the older Amir remembers sadly.

Baba (Faran Tahir) offers advice to his son (Amir Arison) in Broadway debut of The Kite Runner (photo by Joan Marcus)

The event, which the two boys never talk about, leads Amir to manufacture an estrangement; Ali and Hassan leave the estate, much to Baba’s displeasure. In 1978, Baba and Amir sacrifice everything following the Soviet invasion, first escaping to a refugee camp in Pakistan, then starting all over in San Francisco. In 1984, Amir and Baba are selling junk at a flea market in San Jose when Amir meets Soraya (Azita Ghanizada), the daughter of General Taheri (Houshang Touzie), who has also been reduced to selling random wares at the market. Amir and Soraya fall in love, but he is still haunted by how he treated Hassan. When Ramir discloses what has become of Ali and Hassan, Amir is determined to right the wrongs of his past, even if it means risking his life.

The Kite Runner is laden with the shame Amir is burdened with, and its heaviness weighs down the show. Too many of the scenes are extraneous or go on for too long; for example, a wedding might introduce us to certain aspects of Afghan culture, but it adds little to the narrative. The first act does a decent job of setting up what is to come, but the second act is an avalanche of incredulity and melodramatic coincidence that quickly grow tedious.

Spangler (Albatross, Operation Ajax), who has also adapted T. C. Boyle’s The Tortilla Curtain, Mary Manning and Sinead O’Brien’s Striking Back: The Untold Story of an Anti-Apartheid Striker, and Hanan al-Shaykh’s The Story of Zahra, among other books, tries to include too much of the novel, so the plot meanders, getting stuck in the trees till it finally comes crashing to the ground. Director Giles Croft (Tony’s Last Tape, The Understudy) is unable to untangle the tale, which takes place on Barney George’s spare stage, anchored by an uneven wooden picket fence in the back on which William Simpson projects images.

Throughout most of the show, Salar Nader plays the tabla, sitting at the sides of the stage, adding to the Central Asian mood. Arison (The Blacklist, Aftermath) has difficulty navigating the time jumps as the unreliable narrator, delivering important facts at too slow a pace. Tahir, who recently played Othello and Richard III, brings a Shakespearean majesty to Baba, while Touzie (The Tibetan Book of the Dead, From Satellite with Love) is strong as the once-powerful general and Sirakian (The Jungle, Pericles) is more effective than Arison in portraying a child.

Spangler and Croft touch on key issues, from bigotry and immigration to bullying and the Taliban, but they feel less central to the plot than they did in the book, even in the wake of the controversial US pullout from Afghanistan in 2001; the name of the play refers to Hassan, but it is all about Amir, an unsympathetic character who is difficult to stick with in this disappointing adaptation.

MR. SATURDAY NIGHT

Buddy Young Jr. (Billy Crystal) needs to prove to everyone he’s still got it in Mr. Saturday Night (photo by Matthew Murphy)

MR. SATURDAY NIGHT
Nederlander Theatre
208 West 41st St. between Seventh & Eighth Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through September 4, $69-$179
877-250-2929
mrsaturdaynightonbroadway.com

Don’t get me started. So I’m sitting in a theater a few weeks ago, waiting for a play to begin, when I overhear the three people next to me, who are from Toronto, discussing what else they want to see while they’re in New York. “What about Mr. Saturday Night?” the oldest one asks. “Oh, I love Billy Crystal, but I’d rather see a musical,” his grown daughter says. “Who’s Billy Crystal?” her twentysomething son says, as if he could not care any less. What are they, meshugeneh?

In 1984, burgeoning superstar William Edward Crystal got his own HBO special, A Comic’s Line, in which he created Buddy Young Jr., an aging, antiquated comedian with a gruff voice and an even gruffer manner. Crystal, who played the barrier-shattering gay character Jodie Dallas on Soap from 1977 to 1981, further developed Buddy on Saturday Night Live (1985-85) and then in the 1992 film Mr. Saturday Night, which he also cowrote (with Lowell Ganz and Babaloo Mandel) and directed. By then Buddy was a fully fledged, long-out-of-date Borscht Belt has-been whose outsize ego continually results in lack of success.

Crystal, who won a Tony for his 2004 one-man autobiographical show, 700 Sundays, has now turned Mr. Saturday Night into an utterly charming and fun Broadway musical — yes, Toronto friends, a musical, with plenty of shtick — reteaming with Ganz and Mandel (Splash, Parenthood, A League of Their Own), who also worked with Crystal on the two hit City Slickers flicks and the forgettable Forget Paris. In addition, David Paymer, who won an Oscar as Buddy’s long-suffering brother and agent, Stan Yankleman, in the movie, is back in the same role onstage. For the film, Crystal, who was in his early forties at the time, had to go through nearly six hours of makeup every day to play the seventy-three-year-old comedian; for the Broadway show, which runs through September 4 at the Nederlander, Crystal, now seventy-four, requires very little makeup to play the younger Young.

A onetime television star in the 1950s, Buddy has been reduced to telling lame jokes at retirement homes to less-than-enthusiastic audiences. “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.’” Met with crickets, he adds, “Hey, come on. I know you’re out there — I can hear you decomposing.”

Watching the Emmy Awards in his New York City apartment, Buddy is shocked when he sees himself highlighted at the end of the in-memoriam segment that lists all the famous people who died in the previous year. “Look! They killed me!” he tells his wife, Elaine (Randy Graff). “I’m not dead, you bastards!”

But instead of wallowing in self-pity, Buddy decides he can turn the mistake into his last chance to prove to the world what he’s got before he really dies. He sings, “No more playing brises and bar mitzvahs, / Sundays at the Szechuan buffet, / All that starts changing tomorrow when I’m on Today!” After going on the morning show, Buddy is a hot commodity again, taking meetings at the Friars Club and getting a movie offer but, as flashbacks reveal, the hardheaded comedian can’t stop getting in his own way on the road to fame and fortune.

Meanwhile, he tries to reestablish a connection with his forty-year-old daughter, Susan (Shoshana Bean), who has a history of drugs and arrests and is excited that she is up for a PR job. Buddy: “What’s it pay?” Susan: “Okay, you see?! I’m leaving.” Buddy: “That’s a normal question about a job. What does it pay?” Susan: “It pays ten cents a year, okay?! That’s what it pays. Ten cents a year!” Buddy: “Okay, that’s something. That’s ten cents more than last year.”

Buddy Young Jr. (Billy Crystal) keeps Jordan Gelber, Brian Gonzales, and everyone else laughing in hit Broadway musical (photo by Matthew Murphy)

Scott Pask’s set smoothly moves from the Youngs’ home to the Friars Club to a talk show to Young’s good old days, with costumes by Paul Tazewell and Sky Switser and video and projections by Jeff Sugg, taking us back and forth between past and present. Generously directed by Tony winner John Rando (Urinetown, On the Town), Mr. Saturday Night is great fun. Ganz, Mandel, and the endlessly irresistible Crystal — the most delightfully appealing comedian of the last fifty nears — never miss an opportunity to go for the quick laugh but without sacrificing the narrative. The show is all about Crystal; it’s unlikely to be remembered for its cast album, although three-time Tony winner Jason Robert Brown’s (Parade, The Last Five Years) music and orchestrations and Tony nominee Amanda Green’s (Hands on a Hardbody, Bring It On) lyrics are a fine match for the players.

Crystal and Paymer are not there for the singing or dancing; the more intensive numbers are left for Tony winner Graff (City of Angels, A Class Act) and Bean (Hairspray, Wicked), who are both superb. Choreographer Ellenore Scott keeps it mostly simple, not trying to give Crystal and Paymer too much tsuris. Jordan Gelber, Brian Gonzales, and Mylinda Hill excel as multiple characters, serving up, of all things, comic relief. Chasten Harmon (Hair, Les Misérables) is agent Annie Wells, who at first has no idea who Buddy Young Jr. is but is doomed to find out. I hope the same happened to the guy from Toronto. To use one of Young’s catchphrases, did you see what I did there?

Early on, Young declares, “Sure, I’m old but look, my mic hand is steady, / Still upright and I’m ready, / Do I pack away the tux and tie / and lie here growing fungus? / That’s what they want me to do!” And Crystal’s singing as much about himself as Young when he adds, “I got to hear them saying: / He’s still got it! / He’s still got it! / Balls you can’t lift with a crane.”