Billy Crystal poked fun at President Donald Trump and the recent Los Angeles mayoral race<\/a> while hosting the opening night festivities for the 2026 Hollywood Bowl season.<\/p>\n Halle Bailey joined Tony Award winners Darren Criss, Ren\u00e9e Elise Goldsberry, Brian Stokes Mitchell and Lea Salonga as the performers of \u201cThe Best of Broadway,\u201d which kicked off the storied L.A. venue\u2019s summer lineup on Saturday. Conductor Thomas Wilkins led the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra in accompanying the stars, alongside members from the Youth Orchestra of Los Angeles and the California State University, Fullerton University Singers.<\/p>\n More from The Hollywood Reporter<\/strong><\/p>\n \u201cWelcome to the 2026 opening night of the Hollywood Bowl,\u201d Crystal told the crowd at the start of the evening. \u201cI haven\u2019t heard excitement like that since they took Trump\u2019s name off<\/a> the Kennedy Center. Unbelievable.\u201d The barb led to enthusiastic cheers from the audience.<\/p>\n After lamenting the infamous L.A. traffic, the nine-time Oscar host quipped, \u201cEverything\u2019s slow here. That\u2019s how we count our mail-in ballots \u2014 very slow. Right before I came out, they had the final results of the governor race, and Gray Davis is going to be in.\u201d The joke, which referenced the former California governor who was recalled in October 2003 and replaced by Arnold Schwarzenegger, followed a vote-counting process earlier this month that took the city nearly a week to conclude that Spencer Pratt would not be moving<\/a> on to this fall\u2019s mayoral runoff election.<\/p>\n \u201cTonight\u2019s theme is the best of Broadway,\u201d Crystal continued. \u201cIt was either this or holding a UFC match here, and we decided that we would be classy and respectful.\u201d In reacting to the crowd\u2019s response to Trump\u2019s recent UFC Freedom 250 event<\/a> at the White House, the host lamented, \u201cI know. We\u2019ll get through it.\u201d<\/p>\n Saturday\u2019s music performances included Criss\u2019 renditions of \u201cSomething\u2019s Coming\u201d from West Side Story and \u201cThe Music of the Night\u201d from The Phantom of the Opera, in addition to a duet alongside Salonga for Little Shop of Horrors\u2019 \u201cSuddenly Seymour.\u201d Bailey\u2019s performances included The Little Mermaid\u2019s \u201cPart of Your World,\u201d which the actress previously recorded as the star of Disney\u2019s 2023 live-action version of the classic animated film, and \u201cHome\u201d from The Wiz.<\/p>\n Other standout moments included Goldsberry singing \u201cSatisfied,\u201d which she performed in the original Broadway production of Hamilton. Additionally, Salonga belted out \u201cDefying Gravity\u201d from Wicked, while Mitchell took on \u201cWheels of a Dream,\u201d the tune he first performed during the debut production of Ragtime.<\/p>\n Best of The Hollywood Reporter<\/strong><\/p>\n Sign up for THR’s Newsletter<\/a>. For the latest news, follow us on Facebook<\/a>, Twitter<\/a>, and Instagram<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.yahoo.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Billy Crystal poked fun at President Donald Trump and the recent Los Angeles mayoral race while hosting the opening night festivities for the 2026 Hollywood Bowl season. Halle Bailey joined Tony Award winners Darren Criss, Ren\u00e9e Elise Goldsberry, Brian Stokes Mitchell and Lea Salonga as the performers of \u201cThe Best of Broadway,\u201d which kicked off […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2471330,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25173],"tags":[317505,369714,398127,480936,374485,22389,352590,354480,486302,34395,384747,22693,345471,486303],"class_list":["post-2471329","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-artists","tag-arnold-schwarzenegger","tag-billy-crystal","tag-brian-stokes-mitchell","tag-california-state-university","tag-darren-criss","tag-donald-trump","tag-halle-bailey","tag-hollywood-bowl","tag-hollywood-bowl-orchestra","tag-hollywood-reporter","tag-lea-salonga","tag-los-angeles","tag-renee-elise-goldsberry","tag-youth-orchestra"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/Billy-Crystal-Roasts-Trumps-UFC-Match-LA-Mayoral-Race-at.jpeg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2471329","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2471329"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2471329\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2471331,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2471329\/revisions\/2471331"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2471330"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2471329"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2471329"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2471329"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/span><\/div>\n