JACK CHAMBERS - Better than Broadway
The former winner of So You Think You Can Dance is starring in the Australian production of 'Singin' in the Rain'.
Her Majesty's Theatre in Melbourne is surely what everyone imagines backstage at a theatre to be. The maze of narrow corridors, the walls papered in posters and graffiti-ed with the autographs of the many artists who have performed there, the cozy dressing rooms with their mirrors fringed by lightbulbs. Jack Chambers' mirror is plastered with photos of friends and family, like the mirrors of performers in theatres all over the world. He is here performing the role of Cosmo Brown in the Melbourne season of Singin' in the Rain.
Singin' in the Rain is a significant musical for Chambers. He credits it with being the show that set him on his path into musical theatre. He loved the movie from when he was a child, and at the age of 10 made his debut in the role of the young Cosmo (a junior role not in the current production) in an amateur production in his hometown of Brisbane by Ocean Theatre Company. The part was small but the impact was huge. "The show had a stellar cast," he says, "and the rest of the time I would be on the wings watching everything they did, copying, and at interval performing their numbers for them in their dressing rooms! I just loved being in that atmosphere and seeing how everything worked.”
Jack Chambers seems to have been born with dancing feet. He has old film footage of him dancing in nappies. "My sisters danced, and so I copied them. They take the credit now for making me a dancer!" He started training officially at the age of three at the Julie-ann Lucas Dance school, where he stayed till he was 17, learning all styles, taking his CSTD exams and revelling in the supportive, family atmosphere. At the same time he finished his education at Whites Hill State College. The only time he took off school was when he landed the role of Kurt Von Trapp in the SEL/John Frost production of The Sound of Music when he was in Year Seven. Otherwise he wangled his dancing around his educational commitments, and even finished as College captain. "My family brought dance to that school," he claims. His older sister taught dance as a sport, and Jack persuaded the school to compete in the local rock eisteddfod. "My sister and myself choreographed it and made up the whole story line. And we won the small schools division!”
As is now well known, he was to go on and compete in a much more public style of eisteddfod. He had not long graduated from secondary school when he became the winner of the first Australian TV series of So You Think You Can Dance.
He claims that at first he was reluctant to enter the show. "The idea of going on a reality show just did not appeal to me." But once again his sisters took responsibility for his career. He was teaching on the Gold Coast when the talent show announced that Bonnie Lythgoe, one of the judges, would turn up at a public park in the morning and award a prize to anyone who was dancing – $500 and a possible place in the show. Jack's sister dragged him to the site. When they arrived there was nobody there except for a homeless woman "who was very competitive" and a concreter on his way to work who popped in and “did a little bit of ballroom”. Chambers jogged around a bit "in the tall grass and with bugs flying everywhere”. Lythgoe had little choice.
But from such inauspicious beginnings great things grow. A mere few weeks later, Jack had become a household name.
He wasn't entirely comfortable with his new celebrity status. This was a young man who had never until then performed solo in competitions. His experience was entirely in troupes and as the one of a (admittedly undefeated) duo. By the time the show was over, he had lost the anonymity that most of us take for granted and was having to cope with unwanted attention from photographers and excited schoolgirls.
His prize, however, more than made up for it. It included a trip to New York, the Mecca of music theatre. Not only did it provide him with a passage to Broadway, it took him away from his new found local fame while at the same time opening doors for him overseas. In a very short time he had set himself up with an apartment and an agent and was looking for work.
His dream, however, of performing in musical theatre in New York, remained elusive. Visa and union regulations meant producers were reluctant to hire him, even when they were impressed by his talent. "Eventually my agent told me it would be pointless to send me to audition for anything on Broadway," he says. But he was pleased to be invited to teach at the famous Joffrey Ballet School and Peridance Capezio Centre. He also performed in Broadway on Broadway in Times Square and at the Spring Gala 2010 at The Kennedy Centre – hosted by Liza Minnelli – working with choreographer Josh Prince (choreographer of Shrek the Musical) and actor Ben Vereen. You can still hear the awe in Chambers' voice when he talks about working with these musical theatre luminaries.
But eventually he did land a significant role. While still in New York, he was invited to audition for the Australian production of Hairspray as the lead male dance role of heart throb Link Larkin. He was offered the role “within hours” of sending in his tape. The irony didn't escape him – the first major role he had won in a Broadway show was in an Australian production. Should he leave New York and head home? “I thought, why not!”
It turned out to be a wise move. The show was a hit, and Chambers "stole the show" with his "outstanding" performance.
He returned overseas but this time to the West End in London, performing in Burn the Floor, Australian Jason Gilkison's extraordinarily successful production. While there, he assisted Jeffrey Garrett, associate choreographer for Cameron Mackintosh, and Tony Award winner Christopher Gattelli, with auditions for a musical called Newsies. “I taught the dance and got to see the talent but I didn't have to compete. I absolutely loved doing that.”
Now Jack Chambers is settled back in Australia and back in his favourite of all shows. He is relishing the choreography, by West End choreographer Andrew Wright. “It has a real jazz ballet element to it as opposed to just being about the feet. There's a lot going on with the upper body. That's what I find quite beautiful about it. It's quite rhythmical and musical, and of course high energy!"
As Cosmo, Chambers has arguably the biggest dance number of the show: "Make 'em Laugh". In the movie of the musical, choreographed by Gene Kelly and Stanley Donen, this number was so strenuous that the original exponent, Donald O'Connor, is said to have laid up in bed for four days after filming. (But then he did smoke four packets of cigarettes a day!). Wright's version is also virtuosic, and includes not just comic pratfalls but split-second synchronisation with the ensemble. “I couldn't tell you what I'm thinking while I'm performing the number. It's that quick, it's just happening. By the time I finish, I don't even hear the audience is clapping. I'm just relieved.”
“The hardest part,” he goes on to say, “is singing while dancing. I have to choreograph where I breathe.”
Throughout his career, Chambers has maintained his involvement with Raw Dance, a tap dance group set up in 1998 in Brisbane and made up of himself, his two sisters, and his brother-in-law, Andrew Fee. Starting as a tap dance performance troupe, it has expanded to become a full-time dance training institution. Over the years Raw has produced several tap shows, performing in national and international tours onstage and for corporate events. Most recently the company returned for the second time to New York with a show called Untapped. So, by a strange twist of fate, Chambers was performing in New York in an Australian show shortly before returning to Australia to perform in a Broadway show.
Life is like that, especially in music theatre.
- KAREN VAN ULZEN
'Singing in the Rain' opened in Melbourne on May 7, then moved to Sydney on July 7. It moves to the Lyric Theatre, Brisbane, on September 22, then the Festival Theatre in Adelaide from December 1, then finally to Crown Theatre in Perth on December 29.