NEW YORK TIMES July 10, 2004
CABARET REVIEW | 'WRITE NOW! (SONGS BY PEOPLE WHO AREN'T DEAD)'
Seeing Today as a Golden Age
BY STEPHEN HOLDEN
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With his blend of musical analysis and hyperbole, Mr. Nadler has something stylistically in common with Robert Kapilow, whose series "What Makes It Great," at Lincoln Center, transforms musicology into entertainment.
But Mr. Nadler is really a modern-day vaudevillian, a compulsive entertainer whose strong performing personality echoes everyone from Bobby Short to Al Jolson.
He is also an expert at building a cabaret act. His rigorously structured show begins with the rag-flavored ballad "Blame It On a Summer Night" (by Charles Strouse and Stephen Schwartz) from the ill-fated Broadway show "Rags," and ends with two wildly upbeat numbers by Stephen Flaherty and Lynn Ahrens from "Ragtime."
In between he performs songs (many of them obscure) by John Wallowitch, Francesca Blumenthal, Carol Hall, Ervin Drake and others, skillfully interweaving them with show business lore.