What's a newlywed to do when his ex-wife and her new husband show up on his honeymoon?
In Noel Coward's Private Lives, former spouses Elyot and Amanda each take off separately for a romantic French break with their new partners, Sybil and Victor, only to run into each other at the same Deauville hotel and rekindle their explosive relationship.

Strictly Come Dancing and Holby City star Tom Chambers spoke to What's On about playing the ‘flamboyant’ Elyot and about his career so far.

“Elyot absolutely lives in the moment and just wants to enjoy life and everything he does,” Chambers explains. “He goes against the social ‘type’ in as much as he is kind of anti-moralist and anti-religion. It's quite a glamorous, decadent world - these are characters who don't really have to worry about money like the rest of us, and he just has this very flamboyant nature. He also gets a thrill out of being around people he can spar with. He and his ex-wife have a very turbulent, acidic relationship and completely drive each other up the wall, but that's obviously what they love about each other.”

A long-term fan of the play, Chambers is thrilled to have been offered a leading part, and has been thoroughly enjoying sinking his teeth into Coward's acerbically witty dialogue.

“The play is absolutely amazing!” he gushes. “I saw the late Alan Rickman do it about ten years ago. It was so good, I saw it three times! It feels like it could’ve been written yesterday. The way the dialogue moves from one line to the next, it's like being on a moving train that doesn't stop at any of the stations. And then it just suddenly leaps onto another track and goes off in another direction. It's like a box of fireworks! The great thing about good writing is that as long as you commit to it, it does all the work for you.”

Rickman's isn't the only star performance of the part he's seen. Such familiarity with the play's history could easily be daunting, but he's confident that the brilliant team which director Tom Attenborough has assembled for the show will ensure it lives up to expectations.

“I'm very mindful of the fact that all these great actors have done it before, and it's easy to be scared by that, but you have to trust the material and the people around you. The casting is perfect - I think Laura Rogers' interpretation of Amanda is one of the best I've ever seen, and we've also got Richard Teverson from Downton Abbey and Charlotte Ritchie, who's in Call The Midwife. It's a really great group of people and Tom Attenborough is like a secret weapon. He's come from that amazing bloodline with David and Richard, and he's made us do it with a lot more realism and meaning, so we're not just saying the lines in that light, flippant Coward manner.”

Chambers' previous acting credits include a leading role in the first stage production of the classic Irving Berlin musical Top Hat, for which he was nominated for both Olivier and WhatsOnStage Awards. Like Private Lives, the original Top Hat was released in the 1930s, as was A Damsel In Distress - a film partly responsible for kickstarting his career. After six years of struggling to get a professional acting break, he took matters into his own hands by recreating the complex dance sequence performed with a drum kit by Fred Astaire in the film. He then sent it out to casting directors in the hope of grabbing their attention.
 
“When you go to drama school, you have one compulsory ballet, tap and jazz lesson a week, but I always really loved tap. We finished college at six, but I'd usually stay on till nine on my own, tapping in front of a mirror in one of the studios, going over and over the same steps to make them as fluid as possible. People couldn't understand why I kept doing it, and I don't think I really knew myself, especially when I'd been unemployed for such a long time.”

“It was only when my agent fired me for not doing Bob The Builder: The Arena Tour that I decided to try this one last thing before I jacked it all in. So I left London and went back to live with my parents. I spent seven months watching this old VHS, pausing it and trying to recreate it frame by frame. I created a floor, put up some mirrors, filmed it and then I sent out a thousand copies, and from all of those I got two replies. I'd actually gone into a fire station and got my papers to sign up to be a fireman when the phone rang to say I'd got an audition for Holby City. The funny thing was that they were actually looking for an American actor, and they'd obviously decided that because Fred Astaire was American, I must be too.”
Chambers has continued to build up a portfolio of period roles, more recently finding himself transported to 1950s settings as Inspector Sullivan in the BBC detective show Father Brown, and as Phil Davis in a stage adaptation of another Irving Berlin musical, White Christmas.

“I often used to think I was born in the wrong generation because I find it quite hard to be cool or trendy or modern. I used to watch those matinee idol films when I was younger and just really relate to them. For me, people like Jimmy Stewart, Cary Grant, Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly were all the greats. They have such class and style. Of course, it's a bit romantic because I know that if you actually did live in the 1930s it would have been dire because of the Great Depression and everything else. Probably a lot of that glamour is trying to make people feel good because things were so bad.”

But while he may be comfortable in a top hat, white tie and tails and happy to be performing to live audiences again, he remains grateful of the opportunities that shows like Strictly, Holby City and Waterloo Road have offered him.

“At one time I was doing nothing but plays, but that was back before I got a professional acting job. I've done musicals and TV, but it's now been over ten years since I've done a play, so it feels like new territory all of a sudden, which is exciting but also a bit nerve-wracking. After spending six years as a lorry driver, pizza delivery man, window cleaner, caretaker and barman, I’m intensely aware that it's thanks to things like Strictly and Holby that I'm now able to do these theatre parts. That audition for Holby City completely changed my life overnight. Suddenly, I had a professional job that I was actually able to pay bills from.”

This year, fans of Holby City will be able to see him reprise his role as Sam Strachan in the show's sister series, Casualty - though how long his storyline will be, you'll just have to wait to find out.

Asked what lessons experience has taught him that might benefit aspiring actors now struggling to break through, he suggests that young performers should get creative and start developing projects of their own. “There are so many amazing, talented actors and performers out in the world, but because there's so much competition, it's not really about talent so much as persistence,” he says. “I should have had the courage to find something I felt passionately enough about to record sooner, but it took me a long time to get to that because I always just thought that I was at the mercy of the industry, rather than taking things into my own hands. Working on your own material is good for your soul, and it's so easy to put things out there now - you can just upload them onto YouTube and get discovered that way.”

Private Lives is showing at Birmingham's New Alexandra Theatre from Monday 8 - Sunday 13 February. For tickets click HERE.