To gain maximum value from the new Australian tap-dancing musical Hot Shoe Shuffle at the Queen’s Theatre, miss the first half. This may sound a drastic measure, but I promise it makes excellent sense. You will have time for a luxuriously unhurried dinner, and also a better time at the show itself. More than two hours of virtually non-stop tap dancing is probably too much for even the most chronic tune-and-toe-show addict, and up to the interval, I feared Hot Shoe Shuffle was going to become another legendary disaster of a West End musical, right up there with Which Witch and Leonardo.

The script by Larry Buttrose and Kathryn Riding, is almost insulting. The dire plot concerns seven hideously over-enthusiastic brothers who learn that they will only be able to inherit a fortune if they recreate their long-lost father’s tap-dancing act. There’s a further snag - April, their equally long-lost giantess of a sister, must perform with them, even though she can’t sing a note and her wondrously long legs keep tying themselves in amazing knots. This might sound charmingly naïve, but the effect is of a fuzzily focused cartoon with the volume turned up too loud. The costumes are gaudy and the jokes are dire. Even the tap-dancing seems to offer maximum vigour and minimum grace, and the only bright spot is Rhonda Burchmore who plays the sad giraffe-like sister with delightful gangling gaucherie.

But then, after the interval, the audience finally gets to see this improbably family’s show, and it’s hard to believe you are watching the same team. All pretence at a plot is abandoned, and a stylish design, all steps and twinkling fairy lights, brightens the stage. The cast lets rip with a brilliant, breathless sequence of showy tap routines to a string of splendid numbers by Ellington, Berlin, et al. For 45 blissful minutes the energy is relentless, the choreography – by David Atkins and Dein Perry, who both take starring roles – superb. Dein Perry in particular seems almost spookily fleet of foot, tapping at uncanny speed while simultaneously sustaining two different rhythms. Like all great tap dancers he maintains a wonderful aura of cool while his feet perform their impossible feats.

Meanwhile Atkins and Kevin Coyne make you fear for their manhood with a succession of athletic splits that would seem to guarantee instant hernias, and the once cuddly Burchmore transforms herself into a wondrously sassy sex goddess in top hat and tails. The speed-of-light finale, with the seven hoofing brothers performing a succession of amazing and potentially lethal steps, leaves the audience bellowing for more. A few killjoys will doubtless complain that there is altogether too much mindless entertainment in the West End at present, and in the first half I came perilously close to joining them. But by the end, these wonderful wizards from Oz had broken down all resistance. Owners of tap-dancing studios can look forward to record-breaking business in coming months. Even an out-of-condition fatty like me felt like signing on for a course.

[Poor old Charles, presumably half asleep in the first act but revived  by interval refreshment. The first  half was fabulous kitsch and Rhonda sang perfectly]