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With the most unfortunate and unexpected loss of the legendary Claiborne Cary earlier this season, it was a natural speculation as to who might be the proper candidate to fill her ornate and undoubtedly-expensive shoes. That torch has most certainly been passed to 2010 MAC Award nominee Joan Jaffe, who while putting a slightly Yiddishkeit spin on a music-comedy act of the same type, performs an evening no less than howlingly funny and uncannily impressive.
The act, which celebrates the release of her CD Joan Jaffe...Sings Funny, emerges as an absolute triumph, and offers a bounteous musical nosh to every audience member involved, whatever their cabaret genre of choice.
After opening with Kander & Ebb's "Coffee in A Cardboard Cup," the audience is led down a garden path through Murray Grand's "I'm Never Bored" and then "Saloon," in what might possibly be as marvelous as interpretation as the one done by Dorothy Loudon two decades ago on her album of the same name. But it's her rendering of "I Like You" (penned by none other than Alan Arkin) that reels in the spectator hook, line and sinker. And by the time she's onto the next bit of business and sucker-punches the audience with Tepper and Brodsky's uproarious "Bagels & Lox," Jaffe is truly home before she begins.
She's equally effective at evincing ballads, as she proves with "You Go to My Head." And she pays particularly glorious homage to the great 
composer and lyricist Francesca Blumenthal, first with "On the Streets of Paris" and then the chestnut "Queens," penned by Blumenthal with music by the late great Addy Fieger. And by the end of the evening, when Jaffe poignantly delivers "Hello, I Must Be Going," we almost wish she could put us in her pocket and take us home with her. One is also reminded somewhat by her stage presence, of the late Travis Hudson, the chanteuse who most often appeared with Ronny Whyte in the 1970s; she has the same, "I've been around the block, but I'm still unspoiled, boys" swagger, of which Rex Reed wrote so fondly.
There's not really much else to say. If Joan Jaffe returns to a club anytime soon, catch her show. In the meantime, by all means, procure a copy of her CD.
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