Review: Tap Dogs Starring Adam Garcia
Published on Monday 2nd August, 9.36am, Written by Amy Whiting
When my friend and I went along to Tap Dogs, all we knew was that we would be seeing Adam Garcia and some other strapping young men tap dancing.
I suspect that was all most people in the audience had needed to know to get them there.
While it’s true that a large proportion of the audience seemed to be rather enthusiastic fans of Garcia (and possibly would have been just as happy if he’d come out and read the phonebook rather than bothering with the dancing lark), he and the rest of the cast had a lot more to offer than their faces and physiques. Indeed, every one of them was in possession of an impressive amount of skill, keeping up with the choreography almost faultlessly – that was obvious even to someone like me who is hardly a tap connoisseur.
Adam Garcia is impressing audiences in Tap Dogs at the Novello Theatre.
But you didn’t have to be a connoisseur of anything to appreciate that each of them was putting every ounce of energy and enthusiasm they had into the show, not only keeping up but also having fun with it, playing up to the loose characteristics of their particular ‘role’. While I felt exhausted just watching them, all six cast members were still going strong and smiling after almost 90 minutes. Whether you’re a fan of tap dancing or not, you’ve got to admire their stamina and dedication.
In fact the overarching message of the show seemed to be that tap dancing is not for pansies; it’s for real men. Real men who also like to play basketball, take a saw to steel and other similarly masculine activities, sometimes while wearing wet t-shirts (the women in front of us seemed to approve whole-heartedly of this turn of events but I can’t work out why?). But while I joke about this rather blunt and transparent method of bringing in certain target audiences, I also saw some young boys in the audience and I think it’s a very positive message to send that tap dancing, or any other artistic pursuit for that matter, shouldn’t be considered a past time purely for girls and those not interested in, or capable of, sports.
In general, the show has been designed and choreographed cleverly. After all, there aren’t many regular people who would be kept entertained by standard tap dancing for close to an hour and a half, and while I did feel it could have been a little shorter, for the most part the ‘scenes’ within the show were successful in holding my attention for the duration. There had clearly been a lot of thought and imagination put into the design of the show, and the humour which ran through the performances was a wise addition and one which helps to distinguish Tap Dogs from some of the other dance shows around at the moment which take themselves a little seriously.
Each scene had a particular theme, set or gimmick. While I won’t ruin the surprise by talking about all of them, a particular favourite of mine was the choreography involving basketballs, bounced in carefully-planned syncopation to mimic the sound of tap shoes while dancing – inventive, and illustrative of the kind of skill and co-ordination required by the cast apart from the standard tapping. I also particularly liked a sequence in which each cast member had a noise-making device (various drum, bass and electronic timbres) underfoot so that as they danced each layer of sound added to an overall song of sorts. Again, it is this type of experimentation with sound as an important element of tapping that sets Tap Dogs apart from its less imaginative counterparts.
Overall, is the show perfect? No. It has flaws (for example, I could have done without the sequence with saws on metal – it may have produced pretty sparks but that part was very, very loud and to be honest that outweighed anything else for me), but in general it’s a show which is different from a lot of what’s already out there, involves a lot of skill, a lot of imagination, and a lot of hard work.
The West End can always do with more of those things.
Tap Dogs tickets and hotel deals are available to book now.
I saw Tap Dogs years and years ago, and as a tap dancer, completely fell in love with it so had to see it again….and it didn’t disappoint! I was completely mesmerised from start to finish. Fantastic show – go see!!!! x