Things do not augur well when the Tap Pack boys first take to the stage. These five Australian tap dancers have honed a show that pushes all the ‘Strictly’-slick light-entertainment buttons, their dancing and singing interspersed with manufactured bonhomie, audience clap-alongs and before-the-watershed cheekiness.
As their name suggests, they aim for Rat Pack cool, circulating round a bar-room set, knocking back ‘drinks’ and shooting the breeze. A couple of them open a segment by wondering which type of songs the ‘laydeez of London’ like best. There are lounge-jazz versions of Oasis and Ed Sheeran (delivered with a live band), and even a shimmery tinsel back curtain.
You could forgive all this if the dancing was off the scale, but in the opening ensemble pieces there’s rather a lot of heavy-limbed hoofing, and little sign of natural grace and glide, with the exception of the wiry Ben Brown. The Nicholas brothers would eat them for breakfast.
And yet… a stop-you-in-your-tracks solo from Jesse Rasmussen has him alternating a frenetic rhythm between lightning-fast feet and a cajon. A tap duel, which starts with a blast of Ennio Morricone, becomes mesmeric in its skilful interplay, with the spotlight trained only on the dancers’ feet.
In the second half, Rasmussen runs through a tribute to his tap heroes, and is surprisingly effective in his impersonations of the styles of Sammy Davis Jr, Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly. Max Patterson demonstrates a bit of street performance, stripping the accoutrements to the dancing right back.
It’s Tommy Egan you really need to watch for, though. Of course, we can’t know for certain that the solo routine he presents is really made up on the spot, as this improv specialist claims, but it’s an astonishing tap display that builds in intensity until he’s hammering out completely different rhythms with each foot, and soaring in the air touching toe to heel, all the while looking as if he’s so deep in concentration that he’s not even aware we’re there. It’s a genuinely breath-catching moment.