Janet Yates Vogt and Mark Friedman are the creative team behind Tenderly: The Rosemary Clooney Story, opening this week at the Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park. Their hometown of Cincinnati will see a work by this pair with a show about Clooney, a Kentucky and Cincinnati singer who had a memorable career as a performer the 1940s and ’50s.
Partnering with Robison, Vogt and Friedman have expanded the show to two acts, featuring 16 of Clooney’s best-known songs by the likes of Irving Berlin, Hoagy Carmichael and others — including a new number by Vogt and Friedman.
It’s performed by two actors: Susan Haefner portrays Clooney; Michael Marotta is the therapist who counseled her in the late 1960s when she checked into a rehab facility. Their conversations range across her life, and Marotta briefly plays people pivotal in her life.
