The reviews are in for 860, Billy Crystal’s second solo play on Broadway, which opened at the Imperial Theatre on Wednesday, October 21, under the direction of Scott Ellis. The title is the street number of the Pacific Palisades house where Crystal and his wife, Janice, lived for 46 years before the January 2025 fire destroyed it, and the evening uses the lost contents of his home office to walk back through a career and a set of friendships, Rob Reiner’s among them. The notices are warm almost across the board: the critics agree on the comic timing and on the grief beneath it, and where they part company is over the shape of the thing, with several finding the career anecdotes loose and the political jokes out of place.
The verdict: twenty reviews in so far. Six outlets give a score: New York Stage Review 5 out of 5, Time Out New York, The Independent, Culture Sauce and 1 Minute Critic 4 apiece, and The Guardian 3, an average of 4.0 out of 5 across those six, while Entertainment Weekly gives a grade of A. The rest publish no rating. The Los Angeles Times and TheaterMania are the most deeply moved, and the New York Times calls it a warm and very funny memoir. The main reservations come from The Guardian, Vulture, amNewYork, New York Theater and Cititour, who find the structure rambling or the anecdotes padded, and the Trump jokes divide the room. Nobody questions Crystal’s timing.
What are critics saying about 860?
The New York Times
"Billy Crystal, After the Fire"
Reviewer: Laura Collins-Hughes
Collins-Hughes calls 860 a warm and very funny memoir of a play, arriving only months after the fire that took the Crystals’ house and the murder of Rob Reiner, his oldest friend. She sees it as the natural successor to 700 Sundays, which turned an earlier grief into comedy.
"…he proves that he has only grown more skilled at deploying laughter to assuage the pain of grief."
She finds Scott Ellis’s staging wisely judged, steeped in nostalgia without drowning in it, and marvels that Crystal makes a house of more than 1,400 seats feel intimate.
Read Laura Collins-Hughes’s full review in The New York Times
The Independent
"Billy Crystal is all humor and heart in new solo Broadway show"
Reviewer: Caitlin Hornik · 4 out of 5
Hornik notes how much humor fills the 90 minutes, enough that you almost forget what Crystal has lost, and calls the oblique tribute to Reiner a heart-wrenching moment that shows his magnetism as a storyteller.
"…the beauty of his performance (as well as Scott Ellis’s direction) is the buoyancy it maintains throughout."
A few slightly disjointed transitions in the script are, in her view, easily forgiven, and she reads the curtain call, with the salvaged “Laughter” stone held aloft, as a triumph.
The Guardian
"Billy Crystal’s charisma powers rambling one-man play"
Reviewer: Juan A. Ramírez · 3 out of 5
Ramírez finds the evening perfectly enjoyable but loose. Next to 700 Sundays, which had the father’s death as its spine, the wider pool of career stories here can feel unfocused.
"…proves again that there’s likely no such thing as a bad time in Crystal’s company…"
He misses any deeper reckoning with loss, rolls his eyes at the anti-Trump potshots and finds the video design touching in places and merely illustrative in others, but concedes that Crystal’s grip on an audience is iron-clad.
Vulture
"Billy Crystal Plays to His Base in 860"
Reviewer: Jackson McHenry
McHenry admires the craft of the jokes and the audience’s delight in them, but finds the crowd-pleasing material sitting uneasily inside a story about great loss, with Crystal zagging away from grief toward neatly packaged zingers.
"Crystal, impish as ever at 78, has reached a level of rhythmic precision so refined…"
He credits Scott Pask’s memento-crammed set with giving the show a potent visual metaphor, wishes the Trump material had been one line rather than a stretch, and ends up finding the evasions themselves oddly poignant.
Los Angeles Times
"The Palisades fire took his home but not his humor: Billy Crystal turns loss into Broadway magic"
Reviewer: Charles McNulty
McNulty, who was in Los Angeles when the fires broke out, says the opening re-creation of the evacuation put him in fight-or-flight mode, and he calls the show tremendously moving. Having found 700 Sundays a touch mawkish, he did not expect to be so affected.
"But this is just a brilliantly conceived and executed piece, and I hope it yields Crystal another Tony Award."
He praises Ellis’s direction as impeccable and hopes the production eventually comes home to Los Angeles.
Entertainment Weekly
"Billy Crystal makes audiences feel right at home, while reflecting on losing his own"
Reviewer: Jami Ganz · Grade: A
Ganz admits she needed a tissue early, with tears of sadness turning to joy and back again, and singles out the less familiar anecdotes and their self-deprecating tone as the show’s real strength.
"860 is as succinct as it is poignant, with Crystal taking audience members by the hand…"
She notes that Reiner’s death is alluded to but never exploited, and finds Pask’s set and the photo and video design immersive.
Deadline
"Billy Crystal Remembers The Stuff Of Life And Loss"
Reviewer: Greg Evans
Evans worried that a wealthy star mourning lost possessions could have been off-putting, and says Crystal’s self-deprecation and sentiment head that off, using each object as a madeleine for a memory.
"…gets a fine, funny and emotional telling in 860, Crystal’s new solo show…"
He calls the Ali and Howard Cosell routine as uncanny as ever and finds that nothing cuts closer to the bone than the passages about Reiner.
TheWrap
"Billy Crystal Loses His Home but Not His Gift to Make Us Laugh"
Reviewer: Robert Hofler
Hofler, who was at the opening of 700 Sundays in 2004, finds the new script and Ellis’s fast pace a clear advance, and suggests the staging could earn Ellis a tenth Tony nomination.
"“860,” despite being a one-man show, plays like a big opera without any singing."
Only the Mickey Mantle section tips into unrelieved sentimentality for him, and he rates the Robin Williams-as-Ronald Reagan routine the evening’s best political joke.
TheaterMania
"Billy Crystal’s Grief-Stricken Broadway Tribute to His Family Home"
Reviewer: David Gordon
Gordon notes that the play was obviously written quickly and is more reactive and less rigorous than 700 Sundays, but argues that is the point: we watch Crystal process grief in real time.
"…this is both the funniest and saddest show on Broadway right now, and with good reason."
He hears a profound melancholy beneath the belly laughs, reads the play as a eulogy for a shared cultural history, and praises the fire sequences’ lighting, sound and video.
Time Out New York
"The Hollywood über-mensch returns in a rueful and heartwarming one-man show"
Reviewer: Adam Feldman · 4 out of 5
Feldman calls the monologue warm and bittersweet, and says Crystal’s generosity, quick to share credit with managers and collaborators, keeps it from turning into an ego trip.
"…he’s so comfortable onstage that he slips the pain in easily, like a practiced nurse administering a shot."
He picks out Crystal’s love for his wife, Janice, as the show’s brightest thread and says the comic makes the Imperial feel cozy.
New York Post
"Billy Crystal pays tribute to house lost in Palisades fire in hilarious, heartbreaking one-man show"
Reviewer: Johnny Oleksinski
Oleksinski calls it a feat to make the Palisades fire funny, and says he grappled with the structure until the deaths of Ali, Williams and Reiner made the link between the lost house and the showbiz stories clear.
"At 78, Crystal is still a generational performer."
His one complaint is a handful of easy jabs at Donald Trump, Joe Biden and Kash Patel, which feel out of place in an otherwise gentle show about family and friends.
amNewYork
"Billy Crystal finds laughs amid loss in ‘860’"
Reviewer: Matt Windman
Windman judges 700 Sundays the better-developed show and finds that 860 leans more on career anecdotes and clips, some of them padding. Even so, he concludes that it works.
"I could have easily and happily stayed longer listening to him tell more stories and jokes."
He enjoys the Williams-as-Reagan phone call and the story of Ali refusing a club that barred Jews, and appreciates how openly Crystal celebrates his Jewish identity.
The New York Sun
"Billy Crystal Swaps a Pity Party for a Broadway Valentine"
Reviewer: Elysa Gardner
Gardner sees the show as a clear successor to 700 Sundays and argues that its real star is Janice Crystal, married to him for 56 years.
"“860” is, in fact, much more of a valentine than a pity party…"
She finds his swipes at the White House never mean-spirited, credits Ellis with adroit direction, and thinks Crystal’s late confessions about mortality land as sincere rather than contrived.
New York Stage Review
"Billy Crystal Brings Down the House"
Reviewer: Roma Torre · 5 out of 5
Torre reads the show as a love story, to his family and to the house, and laughs hardest at his impersonations of Ali, Howard Cosell and a fast-talking young Martin Scorsese.
"…who else but Billy Crystal could tread that fine line between comedy and tragedy, evoking tears and laughter in equal measure."
She allows that some may find the material dated, but feels his humor never gets old. Her colleague Frank Scheck filed a separate four-star notice for the same outlet.
Culture Sauce
Reviewer: Thom Geier · 4 out of 5
Geier enjoys an enticingly comic nostalgia tour through half a century in Hollywood, from Scorsese’s film class to the Oscars, delivered by what he calls the coolest grandpa ever.
"This is a comfy cardigan of a show, full of warm reminiscences and genial impressions…"
He finds the swipes at Kissinger, Patel and Trump more filler than knockout punches, and says Crystal defaults to jokes rather than dwelling on loss, which is exactly what his fans want.
1 Minute Critic
"Billy Crystal comes home to Broadway"
Reviewer: Matthew Wexler · 4 out of 5
Wexler finds the most captivating moments in the friendships Crystal built over 50 years in the business, more than in the fire itself.
"…a born storyteller can sift through a lifetime of loss and still find the laugh in every room."
His reservation is the video design, which he calls unnecessarily fussy and distracting.
New York Theatre Guide
"Billy Crystal rises from the ashes of a devastating loss"
Reviewer: Joe Dziemianowicz
Dziemianowicz describes a personal and professional highlights reel, briskly staged, that runs on Jewish pride, impeccable timing and affectionate impressions.
"…this deeply personal show that’s brimming with laughs and all but guaranteed to bring tears."
Some vignettes land harder than others, he says, but all ring true, and the show’s takeaway is that sometimes all you can do is laugh.
Read Joe Dziemianowicz’s full review at New York Theatre Guide
New York Theater
"Billy Crystal recalls his lost home plus 61 celebrities"
Reviewer: Jonathan Mandell
Mandell counts only about a third of the evening as being about the fire, with the rest a star-studded career memoir, and finds the earlier 700 Sundays more relatable for the average theatergoer.
"Still, there is a reason Crystal became a celebrity; he is good at what he does…"
He is touched by Crystal’s discretion about Reiner and Williams, less so by a string of what he calls grandpa jokes about aging.
Cititour
Reviewer: Brian Scott Lipton
Lipton laughed a lot, crediting Crystal’s timing and writing, and rates the Blood, Sweat & Tears opening-act story one of the funniest tales he has heard.
"…there’s no denying I’m the target audience for Billy Crystal’s mostly wonderful autobiographical show “860”…"
He finds the friendship segments drift into sentimentality, and senses an uneasy fit between the fire story that bookends the show and the far funnier material in between.
Also reviewed by: the Chicago Tribune (Chris Jones), whose review we were unable to read.
For more of what the New York critics have been saying, read our roundups for Copperfield! The New Musical at The Duke on 42nd Street and Lincoln in the Bardo at the Metropolitan Opera, or look back at our news on the show’s rush and lottery.
860 runs at the Imperial Theatre, 249 West 45th Street, through January 3, 2027. The running time is about 95 minutes, with no intermission. Production photos by Avery Brunkus.
