Ten dancers and six singers from the West End will celebrate the Golden Age of Hollywood in Puttin' on the Ritz.

The touring British show features stage and screen numbers by some of the great American songwriters, performed by the vividly costumed ensemble with tap dancing accompanying the tunes. Among the songs will be George Gershwin's I Got Rhythm, Cole Porter's Night and Day, and Irving Berlin's Easter Parade, just to name a few.

Two of the singers in the troupe are Australian singer-dancer Tamara Eden and British performer Graham MacDuff.

Eden came from Macksville in NSW and later moved to Melbourne where she studied at the Performing Arts Studio.

At 18 she worked at Universal Studios Japan before being chosen as part of the inaugural cast at Universal Studios Japan in the latter's 1500-seat theatre.

She's played a singing and dancing Barbie for Mattel in Asia ("That was fun") before moving to London in 2013 where she played the lead role of Jo March in Little Women.

But a lot of her work has come from performing in shows like Puttin' on the Ritz. She's worked for the past three years for a Scandinavian company, performing songs from the musical Les Miserables as well as jazz standards.

To help stave off homesickness, Eden joined a London trio called The Girls from Oz, singing classic Australian tunes in three part harmony.

MacDuff says technically, this is his second trip to Australia.

"I had a brief stopover when I was four or five years old.

"It's past time I came back."

He describes Puttin' on the Ritz an "extravaganza" in which he will do "a little bit of dancing - not quite as much as in my youth.

"I turn 50 at the end of the tour. Having my 50^th birthday in Australia is kind of exciting."

The celebration will probably not be excessive, however.

"We have two shows the next day."

At the age of 19, MacDuff worked as a backing dancer for Banarama: "It was great - we went to an awful lot of places."

He says he "fell into musical theatre" - despite his dance focus, his singing "never got in the way" - but, in fact, musical theatre was where his career began.

At the age of nine, he played a workhouse boy in a professional production of Oliver!

His West End credits have included Singin' in the Rain and Grease and he played Galahad in the London production of Spamalot.

He says Ewan McGregor, with whom he appeared in Guys and Dolls was "a down-to-earth person" who settled into the discipline of the eight-shows-a-week routine while also promoting his latest Star Wars film.

MacDuff also played the Puerto Rican gang leader Bernardo in West Side Story but says that nowadays, in an era when incorrect ethnic or racial casting is frowned upon, "I totally agree it is a problem.

"If someone is capable and talented enough to do it and is right ethnically it should go to them."

But if such a person cannot be found, "You should be able to cast differently."

That shouldn't be an issue with Puttin' on the Ritz. The classics of the Great American Songbook have been performed by many different artists, each of whom has put an individual stamp on them.

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