Philip Quast - Making French Connections
The British Theatre Guide, website interview with Sandra Giorgetti, November 2007
Sandra Giorgetti met Philip Quast earlier this month as he was starting rehearsals for La Cage Aux Folles which previews shortly at the Menier Chocolate Factory. In part one of the interview they talk about the challenges ahead and making French connections…
We meet for morning coffee and he apologises for being late - he's been on a call to his folks, and he's worried. He speaks with unnerving intensity. Before the cafetière is even ready for plunging he is into an explanation on how American foreign policy and the war for oil is pushing the family farm to its ruin.
Fighting the urge to discuss politics, I address the primary reason we are meeting and ask about his forthcoming role. He is to play Georges, who runs a transvestite nightclub in St Tropez where his partner's stage persona, 'ZaZa' (played by Douglas Hodge), is the star attraction.
The show is, of course, multi-award-winning La Cage Aux Folles for which Harvey Fierstein wrote the book and Jerry Herman, the music and lyrics.
Playing Frenchmen is not new to Philip Quast. Scalps under his belt include Javert in Les Misérables, George in Sunday in the Park with George and Emile de Becque in South Pacific - all, incidentally, award winning performances.
Was this mere coincidence, or does he have French connections? The man born and raised on a turkey farm in Tamworth, New South Wales laughs out loud. "I can't speak French but I've always loved the sound of it, I don't know why".
He is nothing if not diligent: "I went to France and sat in restaurants and did all that sort of stuff. I felt at home. The funny thing was, when I did South Pacific Trevor [Nunn] had wanted to cast the real thing, a Frenchman, otherwise it becomes a bit caricatured like 'Allo 'Allo so I had to find another way of doing it. Joan Washington spent hours with me on my French accent and getting the physicality; she's the best dialect coach.
"All I listened to was Léo Ferré and even though I didn't understand it there was something about the French accent that makes me feel very at home. My great, great grandfather was called Philippe so obviously there is European blood in there somewhere."
When I asked him how he was preparing for this Georges, I should not have been surprised that politics came into it somewhere:
"The first thing is reading Harvey [Fierstein]'s Torch Song Trilogy to try to understand his philosophy, the politics, the gay politics, it was pre-AIDS and this is too; to look at the history and read as much material as I can on the laws in America which were driving Harvey. And I write things down, I always have a little note book.
"His writing is unbelievable. We have just had a week's prelim rehearsal I am trying to work out the correlate of what he was saying at the time and how politics have changed now because you can alienate so much of your audience if it looks like you are trying to make a message."
This collaboration between Herman and Fierstein dates back twenty five years and making it relevant to a 21st century audience at the Menier will be no easy task for director Terry Johnson.
"When La Cage was done before it was done in Broadway American accents with Jewish rhythms but it seems now to make no sense to do it that way. Why would you do something set in France in Broadway American accents, so that's the first big challenge, we're trying to reconcile those rhythms with how we speak.
"I remember seeing Torch Song years ago and it exhausted me. I wanted to say 'stop it, stop the wit, just let me see who you are' and La Cage is a bit like that. It keeps going, going, going, so it's trying to find the truth of it and playing the scenes for real.
"Georges, when Cage was done as a play had not an ounce of camp in him. I remember Keith Michell doing it in Australia and it slightly worried me because he was so straight it looked like a man who was ashamed of being gay so, I'm trying to see how much Georges can have what he calls "affectation", there are times when he is quite camp and some of the rhythms are.
"When I say a 'camp rhythm' I don't mean a gay rhythm. When I say to my son 'What's the TFM?'and he says, 'It's the Tradition-Family-Morality Party' and I've got a line that goes 'Ooh, I like the sound of that, there's a bit of everything in there.' It's a rhythm that comes from people who have had to use their rhetoric and wit as self defence.
I ask the obvious question of how will this quart-size musical sit-com fit into the pint-sized Menier: Quast laughs again: "We're in a difficult situation!"
"Cage is a classic French farce like Boeing Boeing and French farces require doors to punctuate the comedy - a door bangs closed and bang, another door flies open - and we don't have that - the Chocolate Factory has no doors!"
Musically it requires a different approach as well not least from Quast who is a powerful baritone.
"It's a big show with big show numbers but in a space that tiny it will feel like you're over acting so there are things to think about like maybe taking a key down a little bit; if it's in a lower key it can be played more naturalistically.
"There's a lot to take on board and we have a very limited rehearsal time - it's a very short rehearsal period…"
With this last thought in mind perhaps he returns adroitly to the earlier question - "How to prepare? I just don't know. Try not to panic?
"I think there's a little bit of me already there in every character I play and it's a matter of just opening up that little bit of you, rather than me becoming a bit of them. It's trying to open yourself up and hopefully things come in by osmosis; you have to come to rehearsals with as rich a palette as possible. Rehearsals are like Impressionism - talk about Pointillism! - it's made up of a series of dots that don't make sense close up but you step back and hopefully it starts to."
Children and art:
La Cage Aux Folles puts Quast on the horns of a dilemma. Whilst it has all the hallmarks of a West End transfer and he admits "I need the money of a West End run - I have three children!" it stifles his creativity to be controlled by a baton and also perpetuates his identity as an actor of musical theatre, casting further into the shadows the classics and straight plays in which he has had great success.
"I was reticent about doing Cage after a year in Evita. For my own sake I really like to try to make it as varied as possible for no other reason than I don't want to be pigeonholed because once that happens, that's it."
Certainly to London audiences he is best known for his roles in musical theatre. Quast came to London under the patronage of Cameron Mackintosh to play Javert in Les Misérables, a role he created in the original Australian production and for which he won a Sydney Theatre Critics Award and a Mo Award. His outstanding performance was recorded most notably in the 10th Anniversary Concert which was broadcast worldwide and brought him great recognition professionally and established an international fan-base. To this day he still receives fan mail because of it.
Here his association with musical theatre remains strong. After Les Mis he settled in London and soon achieved great acclaim for his performance in Sunday in the Park with George at the National Theatre for which he won his first Olivier. Other musical roles include the lead in the RSC's The Secret Garden which transferred to London from Stratford and Miles Gloriosus in A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum.
In addition to other nominations, including for playing Peron in Evita earlier this year, Quast has won two other Oliviers - for The Fix and South Pacific - and remains the only actor to have won three times for Best Actor in a Musical.
Therefore, among London theatre-goers it is likely to be only those who read the programme notes carefully that will be aware of the range of his skill and achievement.
To add to a handful of smaller parts in film, most recently in Clubland with Brenda Blethyn, he also has a variety of TV credits including Corridors of Power and Ultraviolet in which he played a parliamentary backbencher and a vampire-hunter respectively. And then of course there is well over a decade in Play School.
On stage Philip Quast received critical approbation both as Trigorin in The Seagull and Antonio in The Merchant of Venice at the Chichester Festival, as he did for the Australian Premiere of Albee's The Goat or Who is Sylvia? with the Melbourne Theatre Company. He was nominated for a Mo Award for Best Male Actor in a Play for the role of Brandt in Frayn's Democracy and last year for a Sydney Theatre Award for Best Actor in a Lead Role for The Cherry Orchard.
I stop there. Philip Quast is too modest to enjoy listening to me catalogue his successes. When I ask him what he makes of it all, he seems rather embarrassed.
"I don't know". He hesitates uncharacteristically. "I think a lot of time you win awards for things - not necessarily because you were honoured - but for the piece… I really don't know how it works but the year I won for The Fix I suspect that I may have won because it was like nothing else people had seen me do. I thought some of the stuff I'd done in The Secret Garden was as difficult emotionally and singing-wise and I didn't get nominated so it doesn't make sense to me."
He genuinely does not seek fame or celebrity, putting too high a value on his privacy. He judges success by more meaningful criteria: "the fact that I am still married. If I can stay married, give my kids a good life, financially survive and still get fulfilment - it's just a balancing act."
Unsurprisingly, no statuettes adorn the Quast household. They're at home with his parents in New South Wales though he does admit "They're nice to have got".
Quast's views on critics are on record. He is no less forthright about the plethora of web blogs on which anyone and everyone can become a theatre commentator. Whilst he accepts "there is some good - critics have to be a bit more on the ball because they are being blogged too", he admits to not reading reviews or surfing the web - not because he doesn't care what they say, but because he does.
"Someone asked me 'did you read the Todd blog on you that said you were a bit out of time musically?' People have come to expect absolute precision in everything - you have to be absolutely perfect - you can't forget your words, your lines. My god! Do they have any idea what it's like?"
The natural segue to that was to talk about his recent associations with the work of Sondheim. This summer saw a short run of Sweeney Todd at the Royal Festival Hall in which Quast played the Judge. This was preceded by a one-night charity gala of Follies. Both were billed as concerts but were in fact largely staged, missing only the sets.
For the audience Follies had all the glamour and excited atmosphere one would expect of such a star-filled evening. The load borne by the four leads who, in the event, had to learn full parts for a single performance, was disproportionate. One of these was Quast who had the role of Ben.
I was moved by the honesty and openness with which Philip Quast talked about these productions. He said of Sweeney Todd that "to sing with Bryn [Terfel] was a thrill" but described the whole event as "one of the worst experiences I have ever had in my life" and explained how it came about:
"I did the Follies concert because that's a part I have never thought about playing but I almost felt slightly ambitious, I could imagine that part fitting me like a glove.
"But the pressure - people go not knowing the circumstances under which you rehearse; you're flying by the seat of your pants, you only get to work with the orchestra that day. I really need musical rehearsal in order to do the acting I want to do, and I need rehearsal musically. I have never been so frightened as that night of the Follies concert - to do that breakdown scene having never rehearsed it with the orchestra, and I did get out of time because I don't have the musicianship to fall back on.
"And I said that I will never do that again, then the Sweeney Todd one comes up; but I had lost my nerve. Then I thought, 'No, I cannot get so frightened that I cannot go on'; you've got to keep putting your head on the block, so I did it.
"It was just very, very, very difficult. We had only a week's rehearsal … the Festival Hall is an acoustic space and microphones don't go there; and you have the orchestra way over to one side which was a terrible mistake. The monitors aren't anywhere, a conductor who never looks up ever, ever, never watches the performers - in a piece like that … musically I was a bit out. The fear when you get up there..."
Quast trails off and pours another coffee.
Often for reasons of timing and/or sensibility one of the Judge's songs is cut even though it influences the characterisation. Known as 'the flagellation song', as its name suggests, it is a challenging piece to interpret - in this instance it became an impossibility:
"I knew I was in trouble because I was due to do the flagellation song, but I was way over the other side of the stage, no monitor, a delay hearing the orchestra, and I disagreed with the MD about how fast it was to go."
Quast sings slowly, "Johanna, so suddenly a woman, the light behind your window, it penetrates your gown …" He fades off, his head nods and he starts snoring, then laughing. "He was saying it was an operatic aria, I wanted it moving." He sings again, beating an urgent but steady pace with his fingers.
"We couldn't agree. My acting instincts were telling me it had to go faster and he would not. We got to the stage where we could not reconcile it and it was cut."
He apologises and asks if, unintentionally, he sounds like Michael Ball giving the show the Kismet treatment:
"You think thank goodness we got through it, but the relief is not enough reason to do it the next time. I was in fact going to have been doing the Barbara Cook charity concert. I thought people will be paying £150 a ticket, you know and I feel that people are slightly being exploited."
However difficult those experiences, there is another concert in the diary, this time with a very different arrangement. "This piece comes with no expectations, it's a brand new piece. There are no comparisons, they can't compare me, I can't compare me. I just have to try to make it work on its own. People will either like it or they won't."
May 2008 finds him at the Barbican Hall for the world premiere of Tsunami, a piece by award-winning composer Dominic Muldowney. Quast reports it as being "the hardest thing I have ever heard in my life" and he has only received two of the songs so far.
"It is such difficult music and it scares the shit out of me. Once Cage opens my whole time will be spent working on that. It's a very challenging thing but I have a little bit more control with it. With the other concerts I had no control."
Follies and Sweeney Todd aside, Philip Quast has been busy with other things and also had some fun this year. June saw him at the Adelaide Cabaret Festival where he appeared as a special guest in An Evening with Jeremy Sams and caught some shows.
"Adelaide was a real education - the parameters of what cabaret is now. I was amazed. A lot of the cabaret I saw is political, when I say 'political' it has an emotional truth about it so that the audience comes out feeling like they have gone on a journey somewhere, or seen someone who knows something that they don't. You have to have something to say."
Given his evident pleasure at the memory of the Festival it is unsurprising that doing another cabaret of his own is on his "to do" list. "As you get older it gets harder. I will love La Cage but the thought of actually having to do it eight times a week is just horrible… I would really like to do a cabaret show, but I need to do that eight shows a week in order to be able to do what I want to do."
Epiphany:
Whilst in Adelaide, he held a master class in front of an audience of over 200. For Quast, who turned 50 this year, the significance of it taking place on the stage where he started his professional career did not go unnoticed.
"I told this story about how this was the very stage where I had played Adam in The Wakefield Mystery Plays. I explained here is the place, nearly 30 years ago, I took my pants down and I walked down here and I was at the front of the stage completely naked and a woman in the first row screamed! About three days later I got a letter addressed to me at the theatre - I presume it was from this woman - it said, 'I thought you were wonderful as Adam but do you realise that Adam wouldn't have been circumcised?' It brought the house down.
The cafetière is empty again and reluctantly I feel the need to bring our long talk to a conclusion. One question still nags in my head - what is there left still to do?
Without hesitation comes "I would love to be back at the RSC. The idea of doing the classics, Shakespeare - I'm not great at it - but as an actor it is the most fulfilling thing of everything you can do. Eight performances a week become pleasurable because there is so much to explore. The thing about musicals is after the rehearsal period is over you're locked in by the discipline of it.
"I want to write more. I would like to start doing my own creative things, my carpentry. I'd like to have my own orchard. Explore other parts of my life. I don't want to step back, I'd like to be able to find a way of stepping forward - toward an inner fulfilment.
"I have come to a time in my life where I'd give anything to be able to have a 9 to 5 job so that I can do 'something of my own' - he sings unsentimentally from Sunday in the Park - 'Through to something new, Something of my own'. I am exactly at that point, almost a George point in my life where I want to be able to do something of my own …"
We like to thank Marie for providing us with this review
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