Interview with Judy Spiers, Radio Devon May 2002
Judy: My guest today he's won Olivier Award for the best male performance in Sunday in the Park with George, Sydney Critics award for Les Miserables, a MO award for Les Miserables and a lot more, but last year he won an Olivier Award for his performance as Emile in Royal National Theatre production of South Pacific. A new cast recording has recently been released, before we meet Philip Quast here he is singing 'Some Enchanted Evening'.
Judy: That was 'Some Enchanted Evening' from RNT South Pacific Cast recording sung by Philip Quast who s with me now. Good morning Philip!
Philip: Good morning!
Judy: Oh that's a lot of awards you have won?
Philip: Laughs! What have you got a list of them?
Judy: Oh I have listed them all. All the MOs, the Sydney's and the Olivier's.
Philip: Ah yes I know. I am embarrassed just even talking about it really.
Judy: I hate to admit my ignorance here, but I don't know what a MO is.
Philip: He was a stand up comedian called Mo McCackie in Australia. It's sort of like an Olivier except he wasn't a classical actor, but they are entertainment awards.
Judy: Oh I see Ah! It must be wonderful obviously to win awards, but to win them apart from in your native Australia, but to win them in this country as well?
Philip: Well it is and the Olivier Award I won for South Pacific this year was particularly moving because it was awarded on stage and I didn't know it was going to happen. And even more so to have an Olivier Award handed to you a statuette of Lawrence Olivier in one of his roles and to have it actually on the Olivier stage which he performed. So I put the statue down on the floor, centre stage and looked down. I was trying not to cry because the other thing was I got it presented with the cast in front of the audience who had just seen the show. So I was able to say I would like to thank my co-star Lauren Kennedy who plays Nellie Forbush in this and how wonderful she was and to thank this fantastic cast. The audience clapped, because they knew I meant it because they had seen the cast and had just seen them do the show. And so for the first time getting an award in that context, because you see awards given all the time and people thank this and thank that and it seems so hollow, but this was a legitimate feeling.
Judy: In context
Philip: Yes it was
Judy: Sadly I haven't seen your production, but many years ago it opened in Plymouth with Gemma Craven and Beatrice Reading. I know the show, but I had know idea Rogers and Hammerstein got their idea from the Pulitzer prize winning author James A Mitchener
Philip: That's right 'Tales of the South Pacific'.
Judy: Yes!
Philip: We had various people come in and talk to us and sometimes members of the actual original Broadway cast come in who were soldiers and were in the South Pacific. There seemed to be a great thing after the war, were a lot of people in fact did go into the entertainment industry and said it was natural topic for Hammerstein especially because it involved political conflict, which 'Oklahoma' is about, they are going to string someone up and kill them and the witch hunt sort of involved in that and the 'King and I', even the 'Sound of Music has a political context with the Nazis.
Judy: It was very brave of them at the time to tackle such a subject?
Philip: Yes they were under great pressure to cut songs like 'Carefully Taught'. They were asked to if they were touring the south to cut the fact that parents were passing on racism to their children. People didn't like hearing that song. They said no if that song was cut they will not do the show, but they were under great pressure to do so. The most thrilling thing to do about this production is you can still hear the gasps from the audience. Even now it seems relevant that racism is something that does not disappear it's always there in all various forms and we have to be vigilant about it and it's the moral majority that in fact has to keep it at bay.
Judy: It's extraordinary though if you say 'South Pacific' to most people they will think of it one level as the love story, the Garden of Eden and think ah, 'South Pacific', 'Some Enchanted Evening, 'I'm Gonna wash that Man'. Perhaps they do miss that it can work on several levels.
Philip: Especially with my character Emile de Becque has actually gone to the South Pacific he's run away, because he has committed murder, he strangle someone with his hands around their throat. They were a fascist in the beginning of fascism in the south of France and he stands up to fight and says this is wrong and ends up in a fight with this guy and kills him. When I was doing the research to strangle someone around the throat takes an awful long time to kill them any were between three to seven minutes.
Judy: (Laughing) That's some deep research you did!
Philip: You have to and what torment that does to the poor man for years. The irony of the piece is he has struggled all his life with the guilt of killing someone for something he believed in and yet it is set in this setting in the South Pacific were you have all these young men who are going off to fight for something and kill and murder in the same way, but it is legitimate murder because they have been given permission by the politicians to go kill, or told to, or called up or society actually demands them to go for something they are not sure about.
When we talked to the returned servicemen a lot of them knew what had happened in Pearl Harbour, but a lot of them said they did not know what they were fighting for, which is extraordinary and I didn't know that. They all felt well this terrible pressure that they had to go and a lot of the servicemen said they did not want to go because they were in the South Pacific it did not seem to have any relevance to their homeland. It's not like fighting on your own soil so from that point of view it was extraordinary to do.
Judy: Mitchener said your character Emile would have been a member of the French resistance if he had not fled from France twenty years before.
Philip: Yes because he is a man of principles, who would stand up and fight against injustices and that goes hand-in-hand with his beliefs in love, because 'Some Enchanted Evening' comes out of a moment where he finds out that Nellie has promised to marry this man when she goes back. It is devastating to him and he thinks God I have to move now what do I do and he clumsily tries to explain that sometimes when you meet someone and I met you two weeks ago and I know it's only two weeks and but you have a feeling, that's what happens sometimes. Then goes and sings 'Some Enchanted Evening'. Afterwards he clumsily says look might have children, he doesn't even say will you marry me, he says I have saved money, if I die first, I am older, if I die you can take those children back to America if we have them. Which is quite funny, but he is so desperate but he knows he is self read, self taught and very well read and taught himself English.
I believe from my research he didn't sleep out of guilt for what he had done so he's an insomniac and so he clumsily asks. It's wonderful when he sings 'Some Enchanted Evening', don't often know the context it is in and he tries to explain there is such a thing as love at first sight.
Judy: This cast recording is unique is in it because not only is there a rarely performed track, but there is a song never performed on disc.
Philip: Yes 'Careful Taught', sorry 'My Girl Back Home', which was in the movie hasn't been recorded before and they decided to do that on stage and then there was a song called 'Now is the Time', which Trevor Nunn the director found in his research. It was in the original copy and was in the early previews, but because the show ran to long they cut it. As there was no new music in the second half and there were great holes and Trevor found he could put this song back in, which after September 11th was a worry. We worked how are we going to do this because it appears to be jingoistic saying lets go off and fight, but Emile comes to the conclusion yes there is a time you have to fight and lets go.
As much as people disagree with war and I do maybe there is a time and place for it. That there is a time you have to stand up and fight and you don't often know that time until it come and that's what that song is about. It was thrilling to do that and even more so when we first performed it in rehearsal for Mary Rogers and to see her cry.
Judy: So she was there?
Philip: Yes she came over here because they had to give their permission for whether or not it was going to be used. To be sitting there singing that when she was four feet away and see the tears on her face and realising that this song, which really hadn't been performed since 1949 was going to actually appear was thrilling.
Judy: You have also won awards and hugely lauded in this country for Les Mis as well as in Australia, that again another wonderful musical.
Philip: I was directed by Trevor Nunn again and it was my really beginning introduction to musicals, which I don't do that often all though it seems I do a lot of them, but I fall easy into and out of them, because I like to do acting. I also find musicals exhausting because they require all the skills of acting and discipline and you know you have to sleep and to watch colds and require a lot of stamina.
But Trevor Nunn is a most wonderful director and I have been very privileged to work with some fantastic directors in musicals and nearly all of them have classical backgrounds. I'm afraid I am one of those actors that really actually gets upset when people malign musicals and say they are a lesser art form, because I have actually more than nearly any other actor I know crossed the various lines of the different disciplines from film to television to classical stage to modern stage to children's theatre to children's television, so when it comes to doing musicals they are hard. Most great directors like Trevor Nunn understand they are the hardest thing to pull off, but because they are popularist people tend to malign them and it has been the case at the National, were Trevor has been highly criticised for doing musicals there, but I have said it before fifty percent of the audience who went to see 'South Pacific' have never been to the National before and I think that's a great thing that something like this would bring new people to our National Theatre.
Judy: Absolutely Yes! You seem to flip backwards and forward certainly looking at your CV quite a lot between the UK and Australia. What's the state of theatre over there?
Philip: Well I live here now, this is my home. The trouble with theatre there is it is hard to make a living because the runs are very short. You rehearse for the same time as you would here, but most runs are four to six weeks and they are suffering from the same problems that the rest of the world is now with terms of celebrity. You have to have movie stars in plays in order to get people and soap stars because people are so conditioned now with BIG Brother and those shows they want to see the people they read about in magazines in the flesh and you get the audience in when you have these type of people. So they are finding now quite trendy isn't right word, it's almost a tradition now that small theatres have movie stars in them and they are sold out and it seems to legitimise those people as real actors you know.
Judy: I think it is such a shame when you have got a cast of people whose names perhaps not known to the public, but who have really served their time and are fine actors and then you get someone who has done a soap is in the lead role and getting all the kudos and all the money.
Philip: It's not to say they are bad.
Judy: No not at all!
Philip: Often people are surprised that they are not as bad as they thought they might be, but it's getting harder and harder for the jobbing actor I definitely believe that.
Judy: I understand one of the soap stars we have over here, said that theatre is very expensive in Australia as an evening out.
Philip: Well I think it is expensive anywhere, by the time you have babysitters and you go out and have something to eat. I think London is ridiculous, ridiculously expensive. I think, there needs to be a real look at commercial theatre in London. The problems it's been going through the last few years. I think they have become greedy. There are so many long running hit musicals. I think Monday and Tuesday nights should be practically free. I know that doesn't help the investors in the return of their money, but it does invest in the future going theatre audience. There should be a lot more things like student nights. When we lost the tourists with foot and mouth and people were saying support your theatre, but I think a lot of our audience have been price out of the theatre market because it's been so expensive, because it's been a tourist market. I would like to see it re-thought again.
Judy: Speaking to Joss Ackland last year, he was saying they were offering free tickets to students to a production he was in and they couldn't give them away sadly.
Philip: You find when young people go they love it, they really love it and particularly musicals, because they are immediately accessible. I think it's something about hearing a live orchestra and about hearing somebody sing which is another degree emotionally higher for an audience.
Judy: It's so exciting to watch music as well as hear it!
Philip: Yes!
Judy: I know you have been involved and a great supporter and performer for 'Playschool'. You never got sucked into the Australian soaps then?
Philip: I have to confess that I did.
Judy: Did you!
Philip: Yes!
Judy: Which one?
Philip: I did 'Sons & Daughters' for three and half months.
Judy: Oh!
Philip: But I was one of those who realised all I could get out of it. They did ask me to stay and I was tempted and they offered me more money, but I realised I had taken everything I could learn from it. I am not down on soaps like a lot of people because they are so hard to do the conditions you work under. I did 'Country Practice'.
Judy: Oh I loved 'Country Practice'!
Philip laughs.
Judy: I remember being a continuity announcer when 'Sons & Daughters' was on.
Philip: You might have seen me. You wouldn't have recognised me.
Judy: I probably did. I actually got wrapped on the knuckles one day for introducing, because it seemed to go on for years, for introducing episode 475.
Philip laughs
Judy: And I got wrapped over the knuckles and told give it a title or don't refer to it. I feel as I have been doing it for that last decade.
Philip: No it was wonderful to do. I found it very, very hard and I took it very seriously and a lot of people didn't and the people who didn't take it seriously are still doing them.
Judy: Oh I do recognise you. I am just looking at some pictures off the website of you. You look like the 'Fry's Five Boys', do you know what the 'Fry's Five Boys' are?
Philip: No.
Judy: They were, a bar of chocolate we use to have back in the sixties. The 'Fry's Five Boys' were five pictures of different boys on a bar of chocolate and they would be looking like the three monkeys, hear no evil and it looks a bit like that of you. There are loads of pictures of you in various guises and various ages.
Philip: There are so many of them. I have got another one, which is an official site. They asked me years ago and I didn't understand what it was, but look after it and they have been wonderful to me and I am surprised where they get stuff from the research the people do.
Judy: Oh they can be hideously wrong as I found out to my cost.
Philip: Oh really!
Judy: Oh yes you've got to be careful. I often come out with what I think is very informed information and people go no I was never a vicar, and it's like God it said it on the website, I am so sorry.
Philip: No! No! Mine are very good. They have a forum, but I would never look what people are saying about me because it's like reading a diary and I would be embarrassed to do so. I'm so grateful to them, they are fantastic and very supportive and the fans you know there is a whole heap of them, they meet and fly from America.
Judy: Fabulous!
Philip: A whole group came and a lot of them hadn't met before and they met in the foyer and have little signals.
Judy: How lovely!
Philip: Some of them come and see you forty and fifty times. It's hard to understand why, but it's the thing musicals tend to do.
Judy: It's magic and long may it continue.
Philip: Yes!
Judy: Sadly we have not had your production down here, but you have been to the West Country quite recently.
Philip: Yes I went and stayed at Morgan Porth and drove through Devon, but I could never work out what the difference was because the coastlines are so similar here and there, but it was absolutely beautiful. I had a Cornish tea and a Devonshire tea and I am not sure what the difference is.
Judy: I best not say. Did you put jam or cream on first?
Philip: I did both.
Judy: Good!
Philip: What are you suppose to do?
Judy: Don't get into that. Give it a wide berth that one, because we'll get a lot of stick for that one.
Philip: In Australia you can put butter and then cream and jam.
Judy: And why not it all goes down the same way doesn't Philip.
Judy: it was lovely to talk to you, thank you so much.
Philip: Thank you.
Judy: We would like to play out to another track. Which one would you like to hear?
Philip: Well I loved doing 'Nearly was Mine', but on the other hand 'There's Nothing like a Dame' which is a very up lifting piece as well, perhaps that.
Judy: Oh! Oh! I can't decide now.
Philip: Toss a coin.
Judy: Okay! Oh go on then we'll play 'There's Nothing like a Dame'. Philip Quast, thank you very much.
Philip: Thank you.
Judy: Thank you, bye bye.
We would like to thank Hilary for taking the time to make a copy of the interview and sending it to us.
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