Billy Crystal's one-man Broadway show—adapted from his autobiography and first performed in 2004—is titled after the number of Sundays he spent with his father—who died when Crystal was 15. In fact, 700 Sundays serves as both a tribute to his father, a New York City record store owner and jazz promoter and producer whose relationships brought Crystal into contact with Billie Holliday and Eddie Condon (among many others)—and Crystal's personal remembrance of growing up in Manhattan as an aspiring entertainer in an extended Jewish family. Leaning heavily on sentiment and nostalgia for a long bygone era, the production is staged on a simple set that recreates the façade of a ‘50s-era family home, where the 65-year-old Crystal tells stories for the audience, bouncing through his early life with impressions of eccentric family members and re-creations of his own early attempts at tap dancing, telling jokes, and attempting sports as an undersized kid in a big world. This old-school Catskills humor is full of Yiddish interjections and instances of Crystal mugging it up, but—to be fair—he knows how to work an audience. Recorded for HBO during its Broadway revival in early 2014, this DVD release is an extended version of what was shown on cable. Recommended. Aud: P. (S. Axmaker)
Billy Crystal: 700 Sundays
(2014) 134 min. DVD: $19.98. HBO Home Entertainment (avail. from most distributors). Closed captioned. Volume 30, Issue 1
Billy Crystal: 700 Sundays
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