Broadway review: Billy Crystal's Mr. Saturday Night is a hilarious, retro good time.
6 / 10
The songs are witty and droll, but they're mostly what they used to call specialty 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.
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