Mr. Saturday Night is the story of Buddy Young Jr., an outrageous and outspoken comedian who found fame, if not fortune, in the early days of television. Now, some 40 years after his TV career flamed out, Buddy seeks one more shot at the spotlight, and while he's at it, one last shot at fixing the family he fractured along the way.
It's an evening of ba-dum-bum punchlines in this vein at the Nederlander Theatre, where "Mr. Saturday Night" marked its official opening Wednesday night. Low-key ballads in classic Broadway cadences by Jason Robert Brown and Amanda Green are interspersed throughout the proceedings, amiably directed by John Rando. But they are not such prominent features as to distract from the main focus, which is the funny business - sometimes tender, other times cruder and more caustic - derived from the notion that Crystal's semiretired Buddy Young Jr. is over the hill.
To underline Crystal's powers the colorful Brown and Green have written "Any Man But Me." Though more than vocally acceptable throughout. the show's star (no understudy listed) brings this eleven o'clock number off with expanding fortitude. He delivers it as if this final quarter of the musical is the one he's truly pleased to be headlining. Is it going too far to suggest Crystal might someday make a terrific Uncle Vanya? It would be unfair to suggest that Mr. Saturday Night is any less than amiable start to finish, not only for a focal figure who has the audience eating out of his hand but for the other seven-and for Ellenore Scott's jaunty choreography. Paymer has Stan well in hand. Graff, always marvelous, is present much of the time as a likable foil but shows her strength in the "Until Now" duet with Crystal and in the mock-sultry "Tahiti." Though Bean is given ditties as if she's there and so ought to have a song or two, she makes them count. Harmon shows off in the Buddy Young Jr.-taunting "What If I Said?"
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