The creators of Tenderly: The Rosemary Clooney Musical have written shows staged at the Playhouse in the Park, Ensemble Theatre Cincinnati, Children’s Theatre of Cincinnati and around the world.
Their youth-oriented How I Became A Pirate has been performed more than 700 times coast to coast, including two national tours. Their Alice in Wonderland! just completed 116 performances — all in the Philippines.
Tenderly, about singer Clooney’s career from her 1945 WLW-AM debut as a teen to her jazz singing career in the 1990s, has been produced by more than 75 theater companies across the United States, plus the New Wimbledon Theatre in London.
“But nobody really knows that we’re here,” says Hyde Park resident Mark Friedman. For 20 years, Cincinnati’s Janet Yates Vogt and Friedman have written the book and tunes for 15 musicals, mostly “theater for young audiences.”
After a 12 year-absence, Tenderly returns to to the Playhouse in the Park March 21. Nick Clooney, Rosemary’s younger brother, has called Tenderly “the perfect arc for our lives.”
Tenderly premiered in 2012 as a one-act musical at Dayton’s Human Race Theatre. Obtaining music rights for Clooney’s Great American Songbook standards was such a hassle that they thought the show had no future.
“After Dayton, we put it in a desk drawer and said we’ll never do it again,” says Friedman, former music minister at St John Fisher Catholic Church in Newtown and a teacher at Summit Country Day School.
“We could only get one-time rights (for songs). So every time we’d want to do the show we’d have to get the rights again,” says Vogt, a graduate and former faculty member of the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music.
Then Blake Robison, Playhouse producing artistic director, called and suggested doing Tenderly as a two-act play. The Christmas-season Playhouse run in 2014 resulted in the show being licensed by Theatrical Rights Worldwide, which also licenses Spamalot, Jersey Boys, Grease and the Million Dollar Quartet. The New York company handled music rights acquisition for Tenderly, including “Sisters” and “Count Your Blessings” from White Christmas, her 1954 film with Bing Crosby. TRW now distributes seven Vogt-Friedman shows.
Tenderly’s return to the Playhouse is special for the Cincinnati composers.
“Having it performed here is a special thing. We think of the Playhouse as our home theater,” Friedman says. “That’s always been our dream,” Vogt says.
Two people perform the show, which unfolds as Rosemary (Mollie Vogt-Welch, no relation to Janet) talks to her therapist (Sam Simahk). The male lead plays every other part, from from her husband Jose “Joe” Ferrer, Bing Crosby and Frank Sinatra to her sister Betty Clooney, mother Marie Frances Guilfoyle Clooney and a priest.
Directing Tenderly is Michael Marotta, the male lead in the Playhouse premiere 12 years ago who has performed in Tenderly productions across the nation. He “brings his unique insights and passion for the material to this all new production,” Robison says.
In 2005, Vogt and Friedman collaborated on their first musical, Anne of Green Gables, which was workshopped at ETC. After a successful run at First Stage Children’s Theater in Milwaukee, the managers asked them to adapt Melinda Long’s children’s book, How I Became I Pirate, into a musical.
“It was a picture book,” Vogt says. ”And that launched our career. Pirate has played in 1,000 theaters. And it’s still playing!”
They’ve been fortunate because most of their works have been commissioned. “When you write it, you know it will be performed. Almost all our shows were guaranteed production,” she says.
Their TRW catalog includes Alice in Wonderland, Snow White and the Prince, Sherlock Holmes and the Mystery of the Crowned Jewel, Sleepy Hollow: A Musical Tale and Anne of Green Gables. Alice is particularly popular overseas; it has been performed in England, China, Brazil, Italy, Denmark and other countries.
The Rogers and Hammerstein Organization licenses Rapunzel! Rapunzel! A Very Hairy Fairy Tale and The Magical Adventures of Merlin.
George Remus: The Musical, with collaborator Joseph McDonough, was staged at The Carnegie in Covington five years ago, and now is called Bootleg Empire. The duo also has written Cinderella: The Tale of the Glass Slipper; Mr: Scrooge: A Musical Christmas Carol; War Games: Marriage on the Front Lines; and River of Freedom, a musical about Harriet Beecher Stowe and Mark Twain set before the Civil War. All their titles are listed on their website.
In recent years the playwrights/composers/lyricists have been adapting Snow White, Alice in Wonderland! and How I Became A Pirate for Metzcor, an adult day care with classes and enrichment for adults with disabilities. At Metzcor, 2859 Boudinot Ave., Westwood, the cast read lines on monitors placed around the stage so they didn’t have to memorize the script, Vogt says.
“It was a fulfilling process on so many levels, and a joy to see our works performed with such care, pride and talent by this special group of actors,” she says. The writers are now doing adapted versions of their other shows.
A few weeks ago, Vogt and Friedman joined the Tenderly cast on a road trip to Clooney’s hometown of Maysville, Ky. They saw the Russell Theater where Clooney premiered her The Stars Are Singing film in 1953; St. Patrick Catholic Church, where she was baptized and married; and other landmarks. On the way home they stopped in Augusta, Ky., to tour the Rosemary Clooney House museum and visit Nick and Nina Clooney.
Robison says the “audience adored Tenderly in 2014. The musical was a sold-out hit that we extended for several weeks. We often bring back audience favorites after a time,” he says.
Maybe the Cincinnati revival will make Vogt and Friedman a little less anonymous around town.
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