Musical Review—“The Tap Dance Kid” at Encores

The Tap Dance Kid

Music by Henry Krieger; lyrics by Robert Lorick

Book by Charles Blackwell; adaptation by Lydia Diamond

Directed by Kenny Leon; choreography by Jared Grimes

February 2-6, 2022

New York City Center, 131 West 55th Street, NYC

nycitycenter.org

Alexander Bello and Trevor Jackson in The Tap Dance Kid
(photo: Joan Marcus)

As Encores’ first show since February 2020, The Tap Dance Kid felt like a balm, a true crowd-pleaser that, whatever its faults, made everyone happy, both onstage and in the audience.

In fact, the cast’s big smiles at the curtain calls let the audience know that the show meant a lot to them as well. Although the 1983 Tony-nominated musical has  problems—starting with a scattershot book that, while ostensibly about 10-year-old Willie, who dreams of following in the tap shoes of his grandfather, Daddy Bates, and his uncle, Dipsey (his mother Ginnie’s younger brother), keeps moving back and forth among the rest of the family’s travails, to diminishing dramatic returns—whenever the dancing, the reason for the show’s existence, takes center stage, all is forgiven.

Happily, The Tap Dance Kid is crammed with several exhilarating dancing sequences, which director Kenny Leon and choreographer Jared Grimes—with an assist from playwright Lydia Diamond, who has streamlined the story to make it slightly less choppy—ensure stop the show, time and again. Throughout, a dazzling chorus line functions as an ensemble being rehearsed by Dipsey for a show to be put on in Buffalo with an eye toward Broadway as well as Manhattan residents in Willie’s way on the streets and the bus. There’s also Daddy Bates, who reappears as a spirited spirit, dancing miraculously in the person of Dewitt Fleming Jr., particularly in his showcase number, “Tap Tap.”   

But the show hinges on the actors playing young Willie and Uncle Dipsey, and Alexander Bello and Trevor Jackson are simply spectacular, together and apart, as the boy whose precocious talent is ignored by his strict father William but is encouraged by his mom and uncle eventually gets the break he’s been hoping for. Bello is remarkably self-assured, even while dancing alone in “Dancing Is Everything,” and Jackson is so effortless and athletic in his numbers like the first act finale, “Man in the Moon,” and the second act’s “My Luck is Changing” that it’s surprising he actually does break into a sweat after certain strenuous and complex moves.

The show falters most when it centers on the family, soap opera style, as William’s singleminded way of providing for his family precludes love, tenderness and any flexibility. But the actors are so good in their spotlight numbers that they sweep aside any criticism of the family storylines: Shahadi Wright Joseph’s Emma, the older teen sister who wants to be a lawyer, powerfully voices her solo turn, “Four Strikes Against Me”; Adrienne Walker, as Ginnie, is dynamic in her lament, “I Remember How It Was”; and Joshua Henry, as tightly-wound father William, finally breaks out in the brilliant showstopping finale, aptly titled “William’s Song,” in which all the pent-up emotion comes flowing out in ovation-worthy fashion.

Joseph Joubert and the Encores Orchestra make the most of composer Henry Krieger’s rather derivative tunes, comprising mainly by-the-numbers power ballads and belters that are elevated by the musicians and singers. But it’s all that dancing that Encores audiences will rightly remember of The Tap Dance Kid.