The Broadway premiere of Mr. Saturday Night, adapted from the 1992 film, has received generally favorable reviews from New York theater critics. The creative team includes Billy Crystal, Lowell Ganz, and Babaloo Mandel (book), Jason Robert Brown (music, orchestrations, arrangements), Amanda Green (lyrics), John Rando (direction), Ellenore Scott (choreography), Scott Pask (sets), Paul Tazewell and Sky Switser (costumes), Kenneth Posner (lights), Kai Harada (sound), Jeff Sugg (projections), and David O (music direction). The cast includes Billy Crystal (Buddy), Randy Graff (Elaine), David Paymer (Stan), Shoshana Bean (Susan), and Chasten Harmon (Annie Wells), with Jordan Gelber, Brian Gonzales, and Mylinda Hull.
Entertainment Weekly (Andrea Towers): It keeps the things that made [the film] fun and unique, such as the references to famous comedians and the many Jewish in-jokes. But it almost goes too heavy on both those elements, which at times can make you feel like you’re sitting in a Catskills recreation hall rather than a Broadway theater. … All do their best to bring to life a show that at times feels bogged down with mediocre songs and lackluster staging. But what the show has trouble selling, the intimate cast mostly makes up for. … For those looking for a Broadway show that’s livelier than a Catskills performance, you might have a hard time finding it. Grade: B-
N.Y. Times (Laura Collins-Hughes): As a piece of theater, the show is a bit of a mess; the jokes, even some of the hoary ones, work better than the storytelling, and the acting styles are all over the place. Still, it makes for a diverting evening. … Crystal is utterly in his element performing live. … Buddy does want to evolve, at least a little. If his epiphany about his need to change seems to arrive out of nowhere, buoyed by piano and brass in a lovely, impassioned solo, we root for his redemption anyway. This is a musical that wants its guy to get a happy ending. Despite all of the show’s faults, and all of Buddy’s, it turns out that so do we.
Time Out (Adam Feldman): By Broadway standards, Mr. Saturday is a modest little show. … Everything about it is resolutely old-fashioned — in some ways it’s a celebration of oldness itself — and it’s not long on drama. … But it delivers exactly what it promises: Crystal, completely in his element, with a crowd that is more than happy to buy what he’s selling. He’s the cream in the borscht, the schmaltz in the gribenes, and his prodigious charm makes Mr. Saturday Night a very haimish experience. If you have a taste for this sort of thing, the show is — o Lord of old comics, forgive me for what I’m about to write — the show is a Crystal ball.
Variety (Frank Rizzo): The end result is certainly the funniest show on Broadway in years, if not the most likable. Look for a healthy run, at least with headliner Crystal. … It knows what it is: A great comic vehicle with a solid-though-unsurprising story — with a little love, if not schmaltz, thrown in for good measure. … It’s clearly not a show about size, scope and production values. It’s about the music, the performances and, ultimately, the comedy. … The uniformly fine cast plays it for laughs, but they also play it for real. … But the show is Crystal’s and he’s earned it, having lived with the character for decades. … Crystal makes us see that even with flawed heroes, there still can be music in the laughs.