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Set of “Cheers Live On Stage” photo by John Halbach

I came prepared to hate it and left CHEERing. And dumbfounded. How did they do it?  CHEERS LIVE ON STAGE a theatrical adaptation of one the most revered shows in TV history, just launched its national tour at Boston’s SHUBERT THEATRE. This world premiere is only blocks away from the actual Boston bar where it was set and whose facade appears in the opening credits but where it was almost never shot. Surely this staged version would be nothing more than a cheap ploy to cash in on the CHEERS franchise, a mere facsimile with cardboard characters who could only annoy us.

CHEERS LIVE ON STAGE may be a facsimile, but it managed to capture the essence of what made that Emmy and Golden Globe Award-winning series work, an alchemical brew that still makes us want to keep going back to the bar where everyone knows your name. In fact, sitting in the audience, I felt like I hadn’t left. A live, staged version seems a logical next step for the CHEERS franchise; somehow it always felt like we were right there in the flesh, an extension of the live studio audience before which it was taped.

The show opened simply: The lights went down, that wistful theme music came up (you know those few gentle homey notes on the piano that put us right there) and then the lights came up on that beloved bar, just as we remember it– and the audience burst into applause! Understand, this is before anyone ever walked out onstage.  Cheers soon erupted, however, as each character made an entrance and I held my breath.  If it isn’t Ted Danson and Shelley Long playing these characters–who then?

The cast of Cheers Live on Stage. Photo by John Halbach

The cast of Cheers Live on Stage. Photo by John Halbach

No need to worry.  Grayson Powell channeled Sam Malone’s lanky, offhand sex appeal and even moved and sounded like a young Danson. Jillian Louis came pretty close to nailing Diane Chambers’ prim demeanor and supercilious intonation somewhere between a schoolmarm’s reprimand and a yodel. Barry Pearl as the daft Ernie “Coach” Pantusso settled in by Act II and sent us reeling with his out-of-left-field flights of fancy. Sarah Sirota as hard-boiled barmaid “Carla” and Diane’s nemesis was perfect. Buzz Roddy embodied postman Cliff Clavin’s wacky pedantry. But the biggest applause came when Paul Vogt as the oversized Norm Peterson burst in and bellied up to his corner seat at the bar with a bon mot: “It’s a dog-eat-dog world and I’m wearing Milkbone underwear.” Each time he enters the audience chants “Norm!”

Yes, we know our parts, and you’ll recognize these lines. CHEERS LIVE ON STAGE doesn’t reinvent the wheel, but it sure knows how to drive this vehicle. It takes place in two acts and is based on the first season of the NBC series which ran for 11 years between 1982 and 1993. So we are meeting the characters for the first time, seeing the seeds of the love-hate relationship between Sam and Diane take root and blossom, and getting to know and love them and their idiosyncrasies. The 80’s show up too in Diane’s fussy wardrobe–puffy polyester blouses and ruffled dirndl skirts–and on the tourists who pass through the establishment in an array of padded shoulders, shiny track suits, and frizzy hair.

But it isn’t just the surface of CHEERS that the staged version gets right. It manages to capture the real vibe of this fictional place and the affection among these characters who as Sam says “never really go beyond this room.”  Their flaws are on full display; it’s a family of misfits like all of us, and everyone’s accepted. The theatrical has bottled the TV show’s secret formula. As Sam–the skirt chaser but decent vulnerable guy underneath, the bar owner who no longer drinks–distills and explains to Diane so clearly: This is a place where everyone not only knows your name, they’ve got your number too–and it’s OK. CHEERS.

CHEERS LIVE ONSTAGE at the Shubert Theatre through September 18!