I love
Rosemary Clooney. But I really don't know much about her outside of
White Christmas, my favorite Christmas movie. I've seen it dozens of times, each time newly obsessed with Rosemary's performance, voice, hair, costumes. Or rather, I
didn't know much about her, but I do now, thanks to
Old Log Theatre's regional premiere of Tenderly: The Rosemary Clooney Musical. Bio-musicals are all the rage right now (see also
Beautiful,
On Your Feet, and
The Cher Show), and IMO there's not a better choice for a bio-musical than the velvet voiced crooner Rosemary Clooney (except maybe for Karen Carpenter - will someone please wright a bio-musical about her?!). Bio-musicals can sometimes seem forced or showy, but
Tenderly is not. It's an intimate look at the life of the woman behind the voice we know and love. With just a three-person cast and three-person band, we really get to know Rosie (as her friends called her, and after this show you will feel like her friend) at one of the lowest times of her life - her 1968 hospitalization for addiction and mental illness. But we also get to experience the high points of her career, and how she persevered through the hard times and reinvented herself.
Tenderly plays through June 8 at the charming Old Log Theatre in even more charming Excelsior, so perhaps as spring comes (and it will), a trip Out West to visit this lovely and historic lake town and the oldest theater west of the Mississippi (or so I hear) would ge a good way to celebrate.
