Billy Crystal Wrote a One-Man Show About Palisades Fire

Billy Crystal will return to Broadway this fall in a very intimate one-man show that will take the audience into his family's longtime Los Angeles home that was leveled in California wildfires. 860, written and performed by the Tony and Emmy winner, will begin previews this October at a theater to be revealed later, reports the AP. The title comes from the street address for the home Crystal and his family lived in for 46 years, a house lost in last year's devastating Palisades Fire. "I invite you to come inside 860 and I'll tell you all the funny and touching things that happened there, not only in my career but to our family," Crystal said in a statement. "It's a joyous and heartfelt visit, about how with the love of family and friends and your inner strength, you can get through tough times."

This is Crystal's first return to Broadway following his Mr. Saturday Night, which he premiered in 2022, earning him Tony nominations for best book and lead actor in a musical. Scott Ellis will direct his new work. Crystal has had success with one-man shows before. He turned his memoir 700 Sundays into a stage show—first in 2004, then as a revival in 2013—that won him a Drama Desk Award in 2005. The Palisades and Eaton fires erupted in Jan. 7, 2025, killing 31 people and destroying about 13,000 homes and other residential properties. The fires burned for more than three weeks, and cleanup efforts took about seven months.

At the televised fundraising concert FireAid, held at the end of January 2025, Crystal appeared as the first host in the same clothes he was wearing when he fled his family home. Crystal said he returned to the wreckage of his home and began to wail: "I had not cried like that since I was 15 and I was told that my father had just died." His daughters soon found a rock in the wreckage with the word "Laughter" engraved in it. Crystal made a name for himself first in comedy, from stand-up to TV's Soap to the films When Harry Met Sally and City Slickers. Then in 1992, he got serious with the movie Mr. Saturday Night, which he directed, co-wrote, and starred in.