When a musical is called The Tap Dance Kid, there’s the promising implication that there will be lots and lots and lots of exhilarating tap dancing throughout. So, it’s an immense pleasure to report that the revival of the 1983 musical as the first of this year’s New York City Center Encores! series doesn’t disappoint.
Yessirree (to use an expression heard a good deal when tap dancing was more of a rage than it is these days), the renewed look-see at The Tap Dance Kid comes across like a house on fire.
That’s thanks to choreographer Jared Grimes, to his chorus of 14 hot-footed tappers, and especially to Alexander Bello as the tap-dancing kid himself, to Trevor Jackson as tap-dancing Willie’s tap-dancing uncle Dipsey, and to Dewitt Fleming Jr. as Daddy Bates, who taps as if he’s half of the still-unforgettable Nicholas Brothers (whether Fayard or Harold makes no matter).
[Read Steven Suskin’s ★★★☆☆ review here.]
In the first act, Grimes puts his game chorus kids (undoubtedly another dated phrase) through their paces as Manhattan pedestrians in a typical Manhattan hurry. That’s topped by the fabulous “Fabulous Feet” number, which registers as the best song in the composer Henry Krieger-lyricist Robert Lorick score. Earlier, in “Class Act” Fleming Jr. only begins to demonstrate what he can do with taps on. The second act “Tap Tap” and the sizzling curtain-call routine, with Bello and Jackson in white tails, flash that much more of the Grimes mastery.
So, no let-down in the tap front. Then there’s the Tap Dance Kid book, by Charles Blackwell from Louise Fitzhugh’s novel of the far more prosaic title, Nobody’s Family is Going to Change. (Lydia R. Diamond did some script revising.) Perhaps reflecting her own autobiography, Fitzhugh presents the Sheridan family, run authoritatively by William (Joshua Henry).
At one time possibly considered a striver, William has succeeded in establishing a Black law firm and thereby affording his family many comforts denied him as a child. Along his rise, however, he’s caused mounting discomfort by sacrificing a good deal of his humanity. Now, he habitually bullies wife Ginnie (Adrienne Walker) and barely pays attention to daughter and lawyer hopeful Emma (Shahadi Wright Joseph). Worse, he won’t hear word one about 10-year-old son Willie’s desire to become a tap dancer like grandad Daddy Bates (Fleming Jr.), who comes to him from the past like a benevolent ghost.
Bookwriter Blackwell handles his assignment with little flair. It’s as if he has a checklist of complaints William has with wife, daughter, son, and brother-in-law Dipsey. In response, there’s the carload of complaints they have with him. (Any humor at all? One funny line about algebra and X never meaning the same thing.) Additionally, Blackwell deals awkwardly with a secondary plot involving Dipsey mounting an industrial show for a shoe company while he dangles increasingly impatient girlfriend Carole (Tracee Beazer) on a string.
(This is one place where tap-dancing seems out of place. Does it make sense to hawk running shoes using a cast of terpsichorean talents with taps on their soles? Oh well, never mind.)
As expected, things, as well directed by Kenny Leon, work out eventually but not aided by too much of the Krieger-Lorick score, under the supervision of guest conductor Joseph Joubert and a 25-strong orchestra, Though Shahadi Wright Joseph, as Emma, brings passion to her songs, too many of them seem not only extraneous but mediocre and hardly distinguished by the other singers. Somehow, the songwriting team seems to hit a stride only when it’s tap dancing they’re promoting.
Furthermore, a soliloquy seems blatantly misplaced now as it was in 1983. Just before closing, William, whose depressive behavior has previously kept him songless, unleashes a tantrum about Willie’s dance aspirations. Having degraded Blacks dancing as a subordinating way to entertain whites, he excoriates the practice with some demeaning shuffling of his own.
The outburst could be considered a mashup of “Rose’s Turn” and “Being Alive” and is definitely an opportunity for actor Henry to show off his brilliance, an opportunity he mightily seizes. But for William to break down as he does and only moments later meekly change his attitude towards Willie’s dancing is weak dramaturgy.
When The Tap Dance Kid was first produced, this sort of 11 o’clock routine was in favor. It doesn’t work here. Where would it work?: as a first-act closer, rather than the so-so aspirational tune handed Dipsey? This should seem nothing more nor less than Playwriting 101.
A minor final quibble: Somewhere in the dialogue, there’s a spin on the famous In the Heat of the Night “Call me Mister Tibbs” line. The Tap Dance Kid, it’s specified, takes place in 1956. The Sidney Poitier- Rod Steiger Oscar-winner hails from 1967. Oh well, never mind.
The Tap Dance Kid opened February 2, 2022, at City Center and runs through February 6. Tickets and information: nycitycenter.org
