• Courtesy Of Rob Aft
• From left: Lena Richard, Ben Johnson, Matt Cusack, Billy Finn and Jason Cohen

Buddy Holly's musical ascent had the unstoppable buoyancy of bubbles rising in soda sipped at a 1956 burger joint. His songs live on — just try to say the phrase "That'll be the day" without hearing the downbeat — but his life ended in a plane crash at 22, somehow long enough to create a musical legacy yet too short by far. His three-year recording career fits almost too neatly into the jukebox musical structure. Weston Theater Company's production of Buddy: The Buddy Holly Story features 10 accomplished musician-actors who rock the theater with the music's exuberance.

Recording from 1956 to 1959, Holly personifies the second wave of rock and roll. Pioneers such as Bill Haley, Carl Perkins and Elvis Presley preceded him, but Holly's music embodies the rattling, restless emergence of rock saturating the culture. Tunes seemed to burst out of Holly, and the word "hit" describes both their popularity and the way they hammered listeners into absolute surrender to musical joy.

Alan Janes' musical zooms from location to location as we watch Holly's career rocket from radio shows in his hometown of Lubbock, Texas, to recording sessions with the drummer and bassist who make up the Crickets. Then they're off on tour, including a stop at the Apollo in Harlem, where three mistakenly booked white guys in matching jackets aren't going to be well received.

A nervous Buddy says from the stage, "I hope my music is enough." It is, but only in the musical's simplified version of a meteoric life.

Though the real Holly experienced great tragedy, this is a musical to enjoy while accepting that nuances have no place in the story Janes constructs. It's more fairy tale than biography, but making Holly mythic gives us a streamlined legend and more time to clap for each tune. The show suggests that Holly instantly conquered the charts, when in fact most of his success was posthumous. But it was always deserved, and the musical dwells on the songs and not what it cost to make them.

Scenes of effortless creation emphasize Holly's fertile musical mind. One day, the band is slogging through an early, tepid version of "Peggy Sue." Jerry Allison, the drummer, tries to rev himself up by batting out a martial warm-up on his kit, and Buddy seizes it as the song's frantic signature. He jacks up the tempo and turns his guitar line into an assault. The song magically assembles itself before our eyes — and ears.

The production uses exciting choreography by Felicity Stiverson to give the music the power of an outburst. A standup bass can flip sideways to charge a guitar, and the stage pulses with musicians surging into and out of the limelight.

Director Meredith McDonough keeps the action propulsive while pausing just long enough to let each scene's import sink in. The songs fizz like fountains, and McDonough harnesses lighting, musical elements and performance touches to distinguish them. A stirring stillness expresses the tragedy of the plane crash and then, like a song's artful pause, releases sound again and returns the music to us.

Scenes change crisply with as little as the spin of a sofa, and the move from backstage to onstage settings is as brisk as a somersault. The ensemble cast maintains glorious energy in the big numbers and solid connections in the dramatic scenes.

Billy Finn, as Buddy, portrays a singer brimming with conviction. Wisely, Finn doesn't imitate Holly but plants little markers, such as his vocal hiccups, and makes the portrait glisten through the clarity of the character's desire to succeed.

The other two Crickets form a tight musical connection with Finn. Ben Johnson lets it all out on the drums as Jerry; he's the musical engine underneath the songs. As bassist Joe B. Mauldin, Matt Cusack picks and slaps his upright's strings and cavorts over his instrument. Cusack is also the show's able music director, and he steals his scene as the Big Bopper.

With grins and winks, David Bonanno, in his 50th performance with Weston, plays all the industry bigwigs Holly encounters. Bonanno's lovability and the script's steadfast sanitization conceal the cruelty of the real-life versions of the people who swindled Holly, but this show is only about hope and happiness.

As Ritchie Valens, Adrian Lopez sends the all-cast rendition of "La Bamba" to the moon with rejoicing. Ariana Papaleo plays Maria Elena, the woman Buddy loves at first sight. There's little meat on the bones of the love story, but Papaleo's warmth and wit compensate.

Isaiah Reynolds and Lena Richard play the high-energy Black singers Tyrone Jones and Marlena Madison, reaching the rafters in a vivid performance of the Isley Brothers' "Shout."

To make things larger than life, scenic designer Lex Liang rings the stage with a huge black circle, a stylized 45 rpm record with thin arcs of neon tracing the grooves. The neon shifts colors like the ultimate jukebox. An upstage background is also round, and lighting designer Marika Kent backlights it to express mood and location. Rotating lights hit the ceiling and the audience in a modern-day concert touch.

Buddy: The Buddy Holly Story premiered in 1989, had a 12-year run in London and helped define the jukebox musical concept. It's the most straightforward kind of entertainment, asking viewers to tap their toes and forget their problems.

Holly's influence permeates rock and roll music in everything from percussive guitar work to the flat-out yearning of his melodies. The Crickets even set the standard band lineup of two guitarists, a bass player and a drummer. Holly had just time enough to build a glorious rock and roll bonfire, and the glow persists today.

Live musical performance lets the audience feel the musicians' desire to play, and the Weston stage is filled with people cutting loose. There are few more direct exchanges of energy, and this show crackles like rock and roll's first burst from a pair of speakers.