AS PROBABLY the only woman with seven on-stage "brothers", Erin Bruce of Cronulla has become one of "the boys" and loves that role in Hot Shoe Shuffle.
The only hitch for her is that co-star Daryl Somers, a triple Gold Logie winner and former Hey Hey It's Saturday host, makes her laugh.
Bruce's part as April in the toe-tapping musical requires her to be serious.
Hot Shoe Shuffle tells the story of the seven brothers.
Their father (played by Somers) has left them his money — provided they can reproduce his old club show.
But a sister they did not know about arrives on the scene to change their views.
For the Cronulla performer/tap dancer, it is a long way from impersonating a pot plant while dancing to Love Shack at Cronulla Plaza when she was five.
In between, Bruce spent three years studying performance in Singapore, and after winning a singer of the year contest being swept up by a London agent, going on to choreograph and perform in a production of Honk at the Edinburgh Festival.
She won the lead in Shout! The Mod Musical which toured Europe and Central America in 2012.
Bruce has no hesitation about naming her most momentous performance — singing the Australian national anthem at the Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia, in 2014.
With little time to prepare for the Olympics gig, Bruce was nervous.
"James Packer was right near me," she said.
Another Sutherland shire performer is in Hot Shoe Shuffle is Louis Vinciguerra, of Engadine, who plays one of the brothers, called Slide.
Hot Shoe Shuffle (by Birdie Productions) runs from April 24 to May 2, at the Bryan
Brown Theatre, corner Rickard and Chapel roads, Bankstown.
Tickets: birdieproductions.com.au
