CHEERS LIVE ON STAGE is a rousing new theater comedy set in Boston’s iconic basement bar where WE know everybody’s name: Diane and Sam. Carla, Coach, Cliff... Norm!
Utilizing the original award winning television scripts skillfully adapted from the first season of NBC’s long-running sitcom, the stage production gives modern audiences the chance to experience live for the first time since its original taping , that rare sophisticated TV comedy that seamlessly combines slapstick comedy, romance and drama.
Based on the first season of Cheers, this production finds baseball player-turned-bar owner Sam “Mayday” Malone hiring newly jilted aspiring poet Diane Chambers to work in his pub, alongside perpetually confused old bartender Coach and tough-talking waitress Carla, who cracks wise with know-it-all mail carrier Cliff and perennial barstool-warmer Norm.
Cheers was the last, and perhaps greatest, of the pre-ironic golden age of sitcoms, “appointment television” with bona fide jokes and punch lines, pre-dating Seinfeld, Friends and The Office. At the time it concluded in 1993, the series held a record 117 Emmy nominations and 28 wins, earning nominations for Outstanding Comedy Series for each of its 11 seasons. Theater, television and film veteran Erik Forrest Jackson – acclaimed for his Off-Broadway comic adaptation of Stephen King's Carrie as well as Doll, a twisted take on Ibsen's A Doll's House – has expertly adapted the series’ original 1982 scripts for the stage. Award-winning director Matt Lenz (Pageant: The Musical; First National Tour of A Christmas Story: The Musical) fine-tunes CHEERS LIVE ON STAGE for today’s TV audiences accustomed to niche programming and binge-watching.
