Is James Lipton's Sherry! any good? — Page 2

The book 'Not Since Carrie', about Broadway flops, has a section on this show where it says the critical response was negative and the score, save for the title song sung by Dolores Gray, was weak. The author stated that "if anyone ever woke up a sleeping show, it was Gray" (ouch). Also, in those days shows typically recorded cast albums the weekend after opening but, even though Sherry! lasted just over 2 months, no one was interested in recording it. Again, the score was considered sub-par.

I saw Sherry twice in that original run. I would imagine that it falls into the guilty pleasure category, but I thoroughly enjoyed it; I was a kid at the time, so nostalgia meant nothing to me...not even sure I was familiar with The Man Who Came to Dinner.

I enjoyed a number of songs, including the title number. I was not familiar with Dolores Grey (I had never heard of her), and enjoyed her singing of the title song. Unfortunately, later in the show, they gave her a number titled 'Putty in his Arms' which was so much like the title song and which she belted exactly the same way that I thought she did not help the show. Elizabeth Allen was the heart of the show and Clive Revill was a perfect Sherry. I also remember the staging being very fluid (this is 50 years ago), e.g., the sets moved on and off the stage much more 'musically' than most musicals of the time.

It was much better -- and I realize this is faint praise in many cases -- than a number of the shows that have opened in recent times and run a lot longer, e.g., Pretty Woman, Tootsie (yeah, I am one of those -- a musical that has one of the worst scores in decades just isn't going to be enjoyable overall, despite an excellent book), Act 2 of Frozen (I enjoyed Act 1 but thought that Act 2 brought us not one but two the worst 'production numbers' ever -- no hyperbole intended), Anastasia, et al.