Robert Windeler

Robert Windeler is the author of 18 books, including biographies of Mary Pickford, Julie Andrews, Shirley Temple, and Burt Lancaster. As a West Coast correspondent for The New York Times and Time magazine, he covered movies, television and music, and he was an arts and entertainment critic for National Public Radio. He has contributed to a variety of other publications, including TV Guide, Architectural Digest, The Sondheim Review, and People, for which he wrote 35 cover stories. He is a graduate of Duke University in English literature and holds a masters in journalism from Columbia, where he studied critical writing with Judith Crist. He has been a theatre critic for Back Stage since 1999, writes reviews for BistroAwards.com, and is a member of The Players and the American Theatre Critics Association.

Laurie Krauz & Daryl Kojak

Robert Windeler
In a time when most marriages don't last 25 years, it can be comforting to celebrate the silver anniversary of any quarter-century collaboration, in business or elsewhere. It's even better when everyone attending the party is clearly thrilled that the two principals have stayed together for two-and-a-half decades, and are still creating beautiful music. In...

Melinda Hughes

Robert Windeler
The somewhat generic title of her recent show at the Metropolitan Room, "An English Girl in New York," doesn't begin to describe the theme of the evening, nor the breadth of Melinda Hughes's talents. If anything, it read as if we might be hearing about a naïve young Dover sole out of water. Far from...

Sally Darling

Robert Windeler
Her current Don't Tell Mama show could be the one Sally Darling was truly born to do. Back in the 1970s she created four revues combining the songs of Noël Coward and Cole Porter. In her more recent cabaret shows, Darling has teased her audiences with generous samplings of Coward's vast body of work. But...

Celia Berk

Robert Windeler
No sophomore slump here. On the contrary, Celia Berk's new Metropolitan Room show, "Manhattan Serenade," is even better than her remarkable debut outing of last season. Under the fluid direction of Jeff Harnar, Berk seems to have broadened her ability to embrace an audience while simultaneously assessing her bone-deep feelings about the subjects that concern...

Jennifer Roberts

Robert Windeler
Lyricist Sheldon Harnick, who will turn 92 on April 30, could hardly have asked for a more exuberant or heartfelt early birthday celebration than the one Jennifer Roberts threw for him in the form of her show at Don't Tell Mama, "Jennifer Roberts: She Loves…Sheldon!" Her upfront fan-girl enthusiasm for her favorite lyric writer, dating...

Melissa Errico

Robert Windeler
In her recent show at Feinstein's/54 Below, directed by Robbie Rozelle and backed only by musical director Tedd Firth ("my orchestra") on piano, Melissa Errico neatly melded the two major musical strains of her performing career. Songs from Broadway (her own roles and those of others) showcased her solid and soaring "legit" soprano; her contrasting...

Carol Woods

Robert Windeler
If any cabaret singer these days can get away with an amorphously themed show with no discernable through-line, surely it's Carol Woods. Oh, she had a sort-of title for her recent set at Feinstein's/54 Below: "Lighting Up a Stage with the Barry Levitt Trio." And that was a promise splendidly fulfilled by musical director Levitt...

Denise Donatelli

Robert Windeler
In last month's five-night engagement—at five different venues—Denise Donatelli made it clear that she is on a determined quest to expand the parameters of the jazz cabaret songbook. In "Big Noise/New York," her eleven-number set, which I saw at the Metropolitan Room, she found new gold, especially in the adult contemporary world of Sting, Beck,...

Lennie Watts’ RockArrange – Top-40 with a Twist

Robert Windeler
For the Winter Rhythms festival at Urban Stages, Lennie Watts uncovered a new category of cabaret songs. He reconfigured recordings, mostly by rock groups, that were popular from the early 1960s' Beatles forward to Aerosmith and the Backstreet Boys in the 1990s, and even to *NSYNC in 2000. Performed by nine first-rate singers, the Watts arrangements...

The Best of Ricky Ritzel’s Broadway

Robert Windeler
Pianist/music director Ricky Ritzel produces and hosts Ricky Ritzel's Broadway¸a cabaret series honoring Broadway musicals, both hits and flops, featuring Broadway standards, cult show favorites, and otherwise lesser-known Main Stem songs performed by a changing cast. I've not seen any of these regular evenings, but based on this Ritzel's greatest hits presentation at Urban Stages'...