Philip Quast: Secrets and Whys
Interview with Gareth Gorman, LAM March 2001
Philip Quast is doing a turn as the tragic romantic hero, Craven, in The Secret Garden. Gareth Gorman goes looking for the key to unlock the gates, but finds one for his Aldwych Theatre dressing room instead.
Interviewing Philip Quast is not really like conducting an interview. Before
I'd actually asked any questions, I'm sure he asked more about myself, my
background and thoughts than I did his. Even when I managed to get the
interview under way and ask some questions about what we were ostensibly there
fore, The Secret Garden, we soon wandered so far off track that we
didn't really find our way back. In the end, I decided to throw the interview
question out of the window and just get down to chatting by the glow of the
lava lamp in his dressing room.
"Every time I get back there, I think what a beautiful place it is. It really is the place to bring up children," claims Philip about returning to his native Australia, and the unease that can settle in with many who come over and find career and other things doing the right thing for them in Blighty.
"But the problem is, as an actor, work is a little bit harder to come by there. I was back there for a year last year and I did two big shows and I was fantastic. I thought the lifestyle was wonderful there. I own a house in Redfern, in the centre of Sydney.
"But Australia's a different country now. I'd have to say that it's more American now. When I went to school, everything was Anglo-Saxon. All my literature, all the stuff at university, it was all English and all about this country. So all your roots and so on led back to this country. You didn't learn about American history."
From here, the conversation starts to veer towards a series called Flight Into Hell, which Philip shot in Broome, which leads into different territory again as he admits there was great fishing there. Before I know it, he's recommending that I read a book called Cod a "fantastic book" about the history of cod - apparently cod played a big part in the American War of Independence. This, in turn, leads to raves about other books, such as the one about Nutmeg and the history of one island that England clamed in the Dutch East Indies in exchange for New York - just one little spice island that grew nutmeg.
But this Secret Garden thing - in case you're not familiar with it, it's the tale of Mary Lennox. She's a young girl, somewhat privileged and spoilt, who wakes up one morning an orphan after her parents and everyone else in the immediate vicinity are wiped out by cholera. Mary is despatched to England to live with her uncle, Archibald Craven , played by Quast. But it seems he's got troubles enough of his own, as he's still mourning the death of his beautiful wife from 10 years preciously. Craven is a classic, tragic romantic hero, not too dissimilar to Rochester in Jane Eyre.
"It is - it's all those types of guys. He's Shakespearean in a sense. It's no accident that the head of the RSC, Adrian Noble, was drawn to this play. It has mythical, classical themes. It's not much different to A Winter's Tale. There's jealousy, and he loses his wife and she comes back at the end, but he's learnt something from the journey and there's re-growth there's all that stuff. Pericles is like that he loses his wife and she's brought back at the end so, after so many years of this man wondering lost, it has all those wonderful qualities.
"I think Adrian was drawn to it for that reason and so it would cover a wider range of audience than a normal musical would. Kids will be drawn to it, because there's the fascination of the death of the parents and what you do then. From a very young age, children start worrying about that."
Indeed, it's such a classic motif, you can find I recurring in some of the most successful texts of the modern age. There's Luke Skywalker in Star Wars and Harry Potter in the um, Harry Potter books.
"Well, yes it has, Harry Potter is a classic orphan story. But I guess that with The Secret Garden, what you have is a strangely romantic story and it is a bit sentimental. On the other hand, I think it's got a slight hard edge on it. It depends on what show you see, because we have three different children [playing the role of Mary]. It can vary from show to show because of it, and you have to learn to be flexible enough to play three different shows. They come in and they demand an awful lot from you.
"I've done a lot of things with kids over the years. There is of course Play School, so I do understand how they work and function, and I am a father of three boys. But you have to be on the balls of your feet, really. They extend you, so you have to really listen to them."
And how do Philip's sons deal with their dad making a living out of dressing up and living for times in period of make-believe? "Well, I gave up Play School about five years ago, because I used to pick them up from school and I sensed that they were a bit embarrassed. The other kids would swamp me and they'd get the old, 'Your father's in… and does'. They didn't get teased, but I think they were finding it a bit much.
"For some reasons, though, most actors' kids go into acting. Most actors I know desperately try to steer their children away from it. I think that's what becomes attractive about it, is that it's such a varied lifestyle - seems exciting, because you get to travel. In the last three years I've worked in Moscow, Morocco, Australia, Austria, England and Ireland. On top of that, I'm working between straight theatre and musical as well as appearing in television and making films.
"But to drop a name, Pete Townshend told me once that if you do too many things, you're in danger of being depressed - because it feels like you've got to start everywhere at once and you don't know where to stop but you never quite finish. It's a bit of the "Jack of all trades, master of none". I'm actually not fond of singing and I don't like doing it very often, because it's too tiring - too stressful. So after nine months of this, I won't want to sing for a long time. Because I'm looking after the vocal chords so much I don't go out, I go home, I sleep, I try not to speak too much during the day. You try and do the usual things you'd do during the day, but you're basically physically and emotionally exhausted.
"So this romantic notion of how it's a wonderful life is not quite how it is. It requires an enormous amount of discipline. The reality of this business, both from your side and mine, is how everything is sold on celebrity and now everyone just wants to be famous."
He becomes a little agitated when we get to the topic of celebrity and the fame thing.
"Just look at it "Celebrity Big Brother, Big Brother, Popstars. I don't know. I watched Popstars the other night and that girl went back to her school and was being asked questions about 'her life'. 'Did you devote your life…?' She's only 19 and has been famous for eight weeks. Those people picked were talented - they could sing, don't get me wrong, but they are part of a throwaway, churn-it-our line, whereas you get these bands where the buys write their own songs, play all their own instruments and they can't get record contracts , because for the record companies it's too risky.
"There used to be a time where bands were allowed to grow and develop and have their fan base move with them, but these days it's considered that they'll be too old, look too old, just generally be too late- not marketable to young people.
"Celebrity has entered theatre again too. She's very good, but you have Martine McCutcheon doing My Fair Lady. Where does that leave every young actress who can play that part? How do they feel? Some could do it better but they haven't got a hope - the theatre demands that sort of personality, the theatre doesn't create stars. And the National have no choice, they're so under-funded. The theatre doesn't discover people. The Donmar works with film stars, the Almeida works with people who are known from television and film. This all means that it's very hard for actors now and I'm not whingeing. I've got a good life and that's probably where my diversity comes into it. I'm not concerned, I'm not ambitious in that way and I'm of an age where I can sit back and look at things. I'm white confident I can turn my hand to anything, so it doesn't matter.
"I keep thinking that I'll discover what I want to do soon. I've worked on building sites, I've been a fisherman and other things, and I'd be quite happy doing all of them, because somehow I've succeeded in all of them. However, there is that price to pay, in that you get slightly depressed because you don't know what you want to do. What I find hard is the discipline to lock myself into something for nine months at the age of 44 and do this. By the time I've finished this I'll be 45, and to give over nine months at the age of 44 takes a lot of effort and discipline, just because there are loads of other things that you want to do."
An Australian in the Royal Shakespearean Society, this surely can't be something that happens every day - so just how did Philip end up with what must surely be the greatest acting troupe in the world?
"There's been a few over the years- at least half a dozen. There's been Penny Downie, Michael Silberry and, God, years ago there was John Bell. But yeah, not a lot. Even less now? I had a connection with an Australian director, Gale Edwards, and she went to the RSC, and you do three plays and if one director chooses you, you get cross-cast. I wasn't all that great at Shakespeare and I wanted to learn, which accounted for the rest. The RSC is still one of the few institutions of learning as far as acting is concerned. At the RSC you get lectured at classes every day. You also work in small theatres, big theatres, do repertoires, so one day you'll be doing 'Maccers'( in the afternoon and Troilus and Cressida at the same theatre for the evening. That's unbelievable. Then you go on tour and experience a range of different theatres, so it's all very interesting.
"You can be in one of the Stratford theatres the RSC has and you're in your dressing room, you look underneath your table and you find that it's been signed by Ian Holm, Ralph Richardson and Laurence Olivier. They've all sat at that very desk. So, in a way, you're in an institution that has nurtured those people. That's where you're confronted with your own mortality and that's why I find England fascinating. I'm from the country in Australia, not the city, but I feel much the same walking around London with all it's history as I do walking the outback, because you get that overpowering feeling of people having been there before you. There's something very reassuring about that, and there's something reassuring about knowing that you're an actor on the same stage as some other great before you. It feels as if you've been entrusted to carry some sort of tradition - the tradition of storytelling. We are the storytellers. That's a responsibility - they were the most important people in ancient tribes. For the Australian Aborigines, the storytelling and the dancing and all that wasn't separate from their life- it was their life. We tend to make acting, actors and sports stars as separate from our lives and I would love it that we all did it. Everyone wants to, not everyone can because there's the thing of going to work form nine to five, and everyone wants to be discovered. There's an urge in nearly all of us to be storytellers."
One of the shows from Philip's recent past that has received plenty of notice is his role in Ultraviolet, the modern-times vampire story that also starred Jack Davenport (This Life, Coupling) and Susannah Harker (To Play The King); It was one of the few shows of recent times that set out to really supply the thrills and chills and was something of a throwback to both Hammer times and ITC's output (The Saint, Danger Man, The Persuaders) in the 60s and 70s.
"Unfortunately, I think it was a bit slow in the first two episodes and they were the ones that we needed to get people in on. But I also think it suffered from the change in regime and power at Channel 4. We were ready to go for a second series. It's out on DVD now in very flash packaging. It has proved to be one of those shows which has attracted plenty of web attention. Because of it, every review, every photo concerning me gets posted up. Every episode is examined in great detail, all the interviews go up. You're next- whatever you write will go up there."
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