700 SUNDAYS, an autobiographical journey, is an original two-act play in which Billy plays numerous characters that have influenced who he is today. It deals with his youth, growing up in the jazz world of Manhattan, his teenage years, and finally adulthood. It is about family and fate, loving and loss.
Billy Crystal was pronounced "The King of Broadway" by The New York Post for the Broadway debut of 700 SUNDAYS which, in its opening week on Broadway, broke the house record for highest weekly gross at the Broadhurst Theatre and then continued to top its own record every week. With a cumulative gross of over $21 million, 700 SUNDAYS set a record for the highest weekly grossing non-musical in Broadway history at that time ($1,061,689 for the week ending 5/22/05) and was one of the top ten grossing shows every single week of its run, despite playing only seven performances per week.
The show won the 2005 Tony Award for Special Theatrical Experience and both the 2005 Drama Desk and Outer Critics Circle Awards for Outstanding Solo Performance.
Following the Broadway production, Billy played sold-out limited engagements of 700 SUNDAYS in Toronto, Boston, Chicago, San Francisco and Los Angeles. Billy then took 700 SUNDAYS to Melbourne and Sydney, Australia, where both engagements sold out upon announcement and won the 2007 Helpmann Award for Best Special Event. In 2009, Billy brought the show back to the United States with engagements in six major cities: Washington, DC; Philadelphia; Dallas; Palm Beach; Miami; and Atlanta. This fall's Broadway engagement will mark the show's first return to New York since its Broadway debut.
At the Imperial Theatre, where Sundays opened Wednesday, Crystal proves an impressively spry senior, even doing a cartwheel at one point. But it isn't youthful energy that seems to propel his rapid-fire delivery as much as a sense of urgency that his story, and the story of his extended family, be shared again...Fortunately, any hints of self-conscious, kumbaya-ish social commentary are folded seamlessly into the comedy, which is gently irreverent, endearingly good-natured and, yes, funny. Your tolerance for Yiddish and penis jokes might be tested, but Crystal and original director Des McAnuff sustain a knowing goofiness that makes it all go down smoothly.
Billy Crystal loves to command a stage. In a laugh-out-loud - if quite long - revival of his 2004 one-man, autobiographical show 700 Sundays, you can practically hear his heart soaring as he recounts wacky and sentimental stories about his childhood...Many of the stories are riveting (I could hear a whole show about Billie Holiday, a pal of Billy's father, taking a young Billy to see his first movie, Shane). Others drag on for too long (Crystal looooves a fart joke). Still, it's hard to begrudge the guy, who, at the show I attended, was so eager to stay in the spotlight after two-and-a-half hours that he continued telling stories after a long standing ovation and even did some impressive-for-a-grandfather moves. A-
2004 | Broadway |
Original Broadway Production Broadway |
2013 | Broadway |
Return Engagement [Broadway] Broadway |
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