Ready to Charge Head-On Into Pain

New York Times - Watching Bebe Neuwirth extract the scar tissue from the emotional viscera of Brecht-Weill songs at Feinstein’s at Loews Regency on Wednesday evening, I thought, “Here is the new Julie Wilson!” This woman is not afraid to face the painful truth and courageous enough to relive it onstage as completely as a performer can without crumbling into a mawkish heap. It is the same kind of surgery that Ms. Wilson recently performed in her Kabuki-like way at the Metropolitan Room, where she delivered the Brecht-Weill song lyrics as infuriated spoken monologues.

Ms. Neuwirth, making her cabaret debut at Feinstein’s, accompanied on piano by Scott Cady, is no stranger to the Brecht-Weill demimonde. Four years ago in her one-woman show “Here Lies Jenny” at the Zipper Theater, she embodied a distillation of every ruined, battle-scarred woman in the Brecht-Weill canon. “Stories With Piano,” her cabaret act, includes “Bilbao Song,” “Susan’s Dream” and “Surabaya Johnny” from the earlier show.