Bow and I made quick adventure from Waterloo to Toronto and back to Waterloo in less than 7 hours for the final rehearsal of Billy Crystal’s solo play, 700 Sundays.

Our generation may not be too familiar with Billy Crystal, but I’m many of you are still either recognize his name and/or his face. You may remember him from older movies such as When Harry Met Sally, or a more recent one, Analyse This and Analyse That— of which he produced and starred. You may also recognize him as the host of the Grammys and the Academy Awards several years back.

He’s a funny man.

This one-man play predominately revolves around the “good old days” of Billy and his times he had with his father up to his death. Billy spent most of time with his busy father on the weekends, and “700 Sundays” signifies the many weeks he had with him before his heart attack. He talks about the wacky detailed accounts of his birth, the joys of the 50s jazz, his “awkardness” in his teens, and up to the events of September 11th. He pretty much bared his life— at 58— in just shy of three hours.

You will sense a great deal of nostalgia seeing this play. He makes stark contrasts, in a comical sense, between the good old days in America during the 60s and 70s — when life was simple and people are free— to the present time — where life is more based on fear.

It’s quite sad actually, but ironically he puts it in a way that just makes people hysterical. I totally would love to be an American during the time after the war. It seemed like there was so much hope, happiness, opportunity, and freedom in the country at that time.

If you have a love for jazz, you should definitely check it out. He talks about his encounters with great jazz legends like Billie Holiday, Louis Armstrong, and Ella Fitzgerald.

In a nutshell, the production was satisfying pleasant, no more, no less. Like many standups shows, I had trouble to relating to him— there were too many instances where I just couldn’t connect with his jokes. It just seemed that there were too many references to American history that the average Canadian of this generation simply wouldn’t know. In addition, I couldn’t relate to him on many levels related to his Jewish upbringing, and just simply the life and times of the booming 50s and 60s.

Also, I question the amount of truth in some of his accounts related to his life, because I felt that ther were some moments that seemed “perfectly dramatic,” especially as it relates to his father’s death.

But at the same time, Billy Crystal’s great because he can just do it all. He seem to have such a dynamic presence on stage, and it’s really captivating to witness. There is no one set of adjectives that you can describe him— perhaps that just his great ability to perform: he is silly, vulgar, crude, witty, loud, but he’s also sensitive, dramatic, compassionate.

It’s a bit late so, I’m going to cut it short. I’m not going to “grammaritize,” so please forgive me.

I will say: 2.5 stars (out of 4).