IF “The Tap Pack” sounds familiar it’s because it’s the name of the tap comedy group soon coming to The Playhouse, a kind of pun on “tap-dance”, “Tap Dogs” and above all, “The Rat Pack”. 

The Rat Pack? Surely we’re not talking about the Kings of Swing, the raffish clique originally created by Humphrey Bogart but much more famous in the late ’50s and early ’60s during the era of Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Peter Lawford, Joey Bishop, and Sammy Davis Jr?

When I catch up with hoofer Jordan Pollard, I find that the notorious American entertainers were indeed foremost in mind when he and his mates, Jesse Rasmussen and Thomas J Egan, came up with idea some years ago of an hour-long show showcasing their tap skills, paying homage to a glamorous bygone era, and “signifying” more contemporary numbers to suit their style.

The Rat Pack, the group figured, evoked a certain style of charm, class and cheek, with “chic suits, crooning voices and an air of ease with an exclusive boys’ club feel.”

There’s nothing girly about this show, in which the lads tap, croon and joke their way through the evening, and Pollard suspects that as well as being fun, the show could prove empowering to men.

An Adelaide-born dancer who nowadays lives in from Melbourne with his own family, he’s been in a lot of dance shows, such as “Singin’ in the Rain”, A Chorus Line” and “West Side Story” – “I’ve been around,” he says.

“Our concept was to program classic songs, popular swing songs, new songs and jazzed-up popular songs so, of course, we’ve got some of the old ones, like ‘The Lady Is a Tramp’, ‘Come Fly with Me’, ‘One For My Baby”, but we’ve also got numbers by Ed Sheeran and Beyoncé… some might say it’s the old world versus the new world, but in Rat Pack, big band style.

“We take classic songs, sometimes adding in new and funny songs to the mix, we’ve got jokes, banter, stories from the road and from the cast members about how they got involved in showbiz, it tells the story of five friends and the trials of tour and trust.”

It may be an excuse for tap-dancing but it’s not just dance, he says. There are tap “battles”, and a lot of play with their walking/dancing canes as they create on-stage percussion. 

These dancers can also act, so they created different characters, such as the leader, the joker, the mysterious one, the stooge, the one who gets picked on and the older, worldly man. 

Inevitably, he says, there’s an homage to Sammy Davis Jr, legendary in the history of tap dance, but Pollard reminds me that Dean Martin could also tap; Sinatra, too.

Really, it’s just five guys on stage, but that’s exciting, something you don’t often see,” he says. 

And the responses? “Little boys came along who thought dance wasn’t cool for boys… They didn’t know it was a thing,” he says.

Similarly, he reports, he’s observed husbands who’ve been dragged along, but suddenly find it the most emotionally supportive thing they’ve seen in ages.

“How cool is that?” Pollard asks.

“The Tap Pack”, The Playhouse, May 6.