860 review: Billy Crystal pays tribute to house lost in Palisades fire in hilarious, heartbreaking one-man show

Ninety minutes with no intermission.At the Imperial Theatre, 249 W.

45th Street.There are very few comedians left who can do what Billy Crystal can do.Almost none.

Stand-ups who talk about the news tend to pick finger-pointing, strident activism or irony, like they’re auditioning for a spot on “The Daily Show.” But what the extraordinary Crystal manages in “860,” his latest one-man Broadway show that opened Wednesday night at the Imperial Theatre, is a feat.He takes the devastating 2025 Palisades fire in California, and the total destruction of his family’s cherished home that they lived in for 46 years, and makes it funny. Not the blaze itself, of course.

He rightly treats the disaster with solemnity, stress and disbelief.Based on the freshness of the performance I saw, I reckon he hasn’t fully moved on from those difficult January days.

Crystal could have written this show as therapy as much as for our entertainment.However, his memories contained on the photo-and-memorabilia-covered walls of his home office, which has been rebuilt onstage, are hysterical.And sometimes heartbreaking.He takes the audience on a moving and breakneck tour — of his framed snapshots with celebrities, the door of his childhood bedroom in Long Beach, NY, he was given as a gift and of hilarious events like his fateful gig in upstate New York opening for the band “Blood, Sweat & Tears” when frontman David Clayton-Thomas refused to go on.Those physical remnants of his life and long career are ash now, so what’s left are stories.And the crowd is rapt for them all.

At 78, Crystal is still a generational performer.A friend said to me after, “I felt like I was at dinner with him.” He and director Scott Ellis turn the same barn that just hosted the musical “Chess” into an intimate get-together.

Between the appetizer and the main course, though, the situation gets painful.For a while, I grappled with the structure of “860,” which begins with Crystal an...