Cast List (with nomination possibilities out of 10)
NY Times Reveiw Excerpts: My Family Values, City Slickers: By Ben Brantley: For this show, directed by Des McAnuff, has been carefully set up to suggest a night of home movies, screened by a buddy from your high school days who is equal parts attention-grabbing show-off and soft-hearted sweetie pie.It goes without saying that "700 Sundays," which also covers Mr. Crystal's introductions to baseball and Catskills comedy, features funny one-liners, starting with the recorded announcement that immediately precedes the show: "At this performance, the role of Billy Crystal will be played by Miss Bernadette Peters." But it's the gutsier physical comedy that will appeal to theatergoers looking for more than rosy nostalgia. Choice examples of this bolder style of performance include Mr. Crystal's impersonation of his infant self emerging from the birth canal (looking, he says rightly, like Joe E. Lewis) and of his adolescent dialogue with his penis, which has a mind (and a bass voice) of its own. And there is one inspired bit in which Mr. Crystal becomes a live, one-man home movie of a backyard barbecue. The sequence is Chaplinesque in its energy, timing and precisely measured exaggeration. What Mr. Crystal summons here is indeed the home movie of pretty much everybody who grew up in the American suburbs in the Eisenhower era. Its very familiarity suggests why "700 Sundays" needs no critic's benediction to be a sold-out hit TONY AWARDS HAVEN OPINION: Watch out! Billy Crystal has arrived and conquered Broadway! Box-office smash, critics raved, sounds pretty good for Billy if he goes for leading actor in a play. The show itself might get a nod, but no chance of winning. This season, Best Play will come down to "Gem of the Ocean", "Doubt", and "Democracy". Possible direction nod for Des McAnuff.
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