Discovered score gets a new life

“Sherry!” (Angel Records)

** 1/2

In the 1939 comedy “The Man Who Came to Dinner,” Broadway wit Sheridan Whiteside overstays his welcome. This certainly hasn’t been true of “Sherry!,” a musical adaptation of the Moss Hart and George S. Kaufman play, which closed after just 72 performances on Broadway in 1967. Copies of the score were presumed lost for decades.

The score was rediscovered in the Library of Congress in 2000. With James Lipton, its librettist and lyricist, now well known as an interviewer of famous stars on Bravo’s “Inside the Actors Studio,” apparently it wasn’t difficult to assemble an all-star cast to make a double CD recording of “Sherry!” -- accompanied by a 52-piece orchestra in inexpensive Bratislava, Slovakia.

The powerhouse cast includes Nathan Lane in the title role, Bernadette Peters as his secretary and Carol Burnett, Tommy Tune and Mike Myers among his flamboyant New York friends. Tom Wopat plays the Ohio reporter who falls for Sherry’s secretary, and smaller roles are played by Siobhan Fallon, Lillias White, Keith David, Phyllis Newman, Lipton and composer Laurence Rosenthal.

The score is sprightly in a ‘60s style -- the title song is reminiscent of “Hello, Dolly!” or “Mame.” Lipton’s lyrics are witty, but he didn’t know when to stop. The show bogs down among the antics of Sherry’s friends, and whether it would retain its interest onstage without such a stellar cast is open to question -- it could hinge on Lipton’s willingness to use a red pencil.

The second CD includes a video section that is supposed to work in a computer’s CD-ROM if it’s equipped with QuickTime. The promotional copy I received didn’t work in two computers I tried, so I saw a video version of the material. It includes interviews with Lipton, Rosenthal and producer Robert Sher about the score’s strange odysseyand its rediscovery; video footage of Lane, Peters, Burnett, Wopat, tap dancers and the orchestra recording the score; and excerpts from “Inside the Actors Studio” interviews with Lane, Peters, Burnett and Myers -- Lane’s is especially funny.

Cast recording ends on sour note

“Wonderful Town” (DRG Records)

** 1/2

The current Broadway revival of the 1953 musical about two sisters who try to make new lives for themselves in Manhattan sounds as if it’s in very good hands in the cast CD. Donna Murphy of “Passion” fame plays the older, less comely Ruth, and Jennifer Westfeldt is her sister Eileen, a man magnet. Gregg Edelman plays their main man.

This recording is more complete than the original cast’s, especially for fans of Leonard Bernstein’s brassy, jazzy orchestral passages -- which often sound like a preview of coming “West Side Story” attractions. The earlier album lacked the overture and the largely orchestral number “Conquering New York,” although they were included on a 1999 concert-style CD.

At the end of this CD are bonus tracks, recorded in 1953, in which lyricists Betty Comden and Adolph Green sing the score’s “Ohio,” “It’s Love,” “A Quiet Girl” and “Wrong Note Rag.”

They sound like amateurs, compared with the contemporary renditions we had justheard. They add no new lyrics or anything else of historical note, so the addendum seems pointless. The first “Wrong Note Rag” is mildly amusing; the second and inferior version ends the recording on an abrupt sour note.