The Qualities of Quast
Philip Quast, the big new star to emerge from the Australian production of Les Misérables, is off to London and international fame next week - first as the villain Javert on the West End stage and after that maybe even The Phantom of The Opera.
Interviw with Jo Litson, The Weekend Australian 29-30 April 1989
A YEAR ago, Philip Quast thought he would now be in Antarctica hitching a ride on a supply ship - instead he is on his way to London's West End. The actor, who loves fishing and sailing with a passion that almost exceeds his love for theatre, has been invited to repeat his showstopping performance as the ironwilled Inspector Javert in the London production of Les Miserables.When the Australian cast was announced in 1987. Quast was something of a dark horse. True, be had appeared in the Nimrod production of Candide in Sydney and in Carmen for the Melbourne Theatre Company, but he was still an unknown quantity for the all-important role of Javert. His superb and arresting portrayal was therefore all the more electrifying. and was duly acknowledged as such by the Sydney Critics Circle and the Mo Awards. The word spread quickly that Quast was considered by those in the know to be the best Javert the world; together with fellow Australians Anthony Warlow and Debbie Byrne he was chosen to sing on the international cast recording.
Quast isn't keen on such an appraisal. When it comes to discussing his career. in fact. he is totally,y self effacing. "It makes it sound too much like a competition," he says, although he is pleased to have the chance to perform the role again overseas, particularly since the Australian cast recording fell through.
"At least three or four performances by the Australian cast deserve to be seen worldwide to dispel the cultural cringe.''
Beneath the stage whiskers and the greying sideboards, Quast shares little with Javert beyond his towering stature. He positively bounds to the door of his Sydney inner-city house, beaming a warm welcome and looking for all the world like a great big kid in wellworn overalls. There are paint splashes on his face-he is rushing to finish the renovations he has been working on for the past year.
"Renovating houses is very depressing, I think," he says, pointing out several before-and-after photos with a little embarrassment. "At least when you can show people 'before' photos you can convince yourself it was worth it."
At 33, Quast is strikingly handsome with expressive blue eyes and a tanned, trim physique. Where Javert is dour and still, Quast is in constant motion, darting up and down to fetch things, now pulling his legs up under him like a lanky leprechaun, now painting pictures in the air with flying hands. He grew up on a turkey farm in Tamworth. It was there, roaming the countryside (often alone), shooting rabbits and discovering Aboriginal axes and outcrops of garnets and gemstones, that his imagination began to work overtime and a sense of drama was born.
"It's such a beautiful area that I feel quite privileged, though it's changed drastically since then," he says. "But I also feel I missed out a bit on education. I went to a one teacher school, then a high school where I was lazy and never extended myself. I tend to talk too much rather than listen. Its a way of making it sound like you know what you are talking about. I was never competitive,. I was good at swimming but once I got to a certain level I gave it up. I didn't like what happened to people. It wasn't till I was 28 that it hit me, and I understood that competitiveness. I'm not ambitious so much, rather it's a desperate need to he good as a performer.
"I'm now starting to read books and plays and over the last few years have become interested in characters like Javert and Iago. They are the fascinating ones. I can't believe that Laurence Olivier and Ralph Richardson were playing parts like that at 24. I feel as if I will come into my own as an actor when I am 45."
After graduating from NIDA, Quast spent two years with the State Theatre Company of South Australia, "closed the show" as the last new cast member of Young Doctors and became a regular Playschool presenter, where he is known as "Silly Philip".
"I feel extraordinarily devoted to Playschool," he says. "The Comedy Company depicted it as patronising, but I don't believe that. It's for a very specific age group, and helps develop motor skills and the powers of the imagination which children are losing."
Quast has always aimed to move between the different media: he admires versatile performers like Raul Julia, who starred in the musical Nine, the film Kiss of the Spiderwoman and in Shakespeare in the Park. Quast has iust finished filming a small role in Cassidy, a new mini-series based on the Morris West novel in which Martin Shaw stars.
"I found it difficult, being the first thing since Les Miserables," he admits. "I thought 'Oh God! I can't do it anymore.' It sounds paranoid - and I love film more than anything, partly because it's so difficult - but you do have to keep doing different things regularly to keep your hand in."
Denny Lawrence, who earlier directed Quast in the movie Emoh Ruo and the telemovie Army Wives, was instrumental in changing Quast's image.
"In Emoh Ruo I was running around going 'Arrgh!'," he says, thrashing like a wildman. "No one had seen me like that before. I'd always been the young, romantic lead. I played my first arsehole in Army Wives and I've had a run of them since. Macabre characters are the most interesting and challenging for me, for the time being anyway. I have to thank Denny for that because no one else would have seen me playing the nasties - except my wife I suppose."
Quast is also eternally grateful to director Trevor Nunn for the punt he took in casting him as Javert. It is probably true that an Australian director would have overlooked him. Quast himself had no intention of auditioning for a principal role-he arrived, without having read the book or having heard the music, hoping for a part in the chorus. Not being able to sight-read music, he went to walk off stage when asked to sing a song from the show, but was called back by French composer Claude-Michel Schonberg. Nunn has become almost a mentor for Quast. The latter recalls the rehearsal process with excitement and enormous respect. Where most directors spend the first week poring over the text, Nunn used improvisational games to work on the physical characteristics of the characters - the reason, says Quast, for the compelling presence of his Javert, who dominates the stage with rigid stillness.
"Javert for me is not the Wicked Witch of the West," he says. "In fact, there is very little material to work with in the script. Trevor would say things in passing like 'Have you read the Ten Commandments recently?' That's all he would say. If you're thirsty enough, you can follow it up ... there was the whole basis of our legal system and the explanation for the whole of Les Miz. For me, that's inspired directing. That's why he's such all awesome man. I d like to do more exploration like that, without becoming too pretentious or obsessive, because I think most of your work on a role is done at home."
While performing in Les Miserables, Quast gained a reputation as a perfectionist. "I was a bore,'' he says frankly, "but everything had to be exactly right. If something slipped off the rails even a little bit and was left longer than two or three days, it was so hard to get it back. Trevor warned us that it was a fragile piece which could verge on sentimentality. Mind you, I admit I did occasionally muck around - winking up stage or grimacing."
His demand that everything be precisely right intensified after a terrifying bout of stagefright. "I had a terrible time," he says. "It took me a month to get over it. At one stage I wasn't sleeping at all but lying awake planning speeches to the audience about being sorry and could I start again. I won't go into that because I solved it in my own way and it still makes me feel a bit sick to think about it. I'm not sure if it was the long run or the tiredness but I dried one night. No one would have noticed. It was just a small fluff that I'd sung something without realising I'd sung it. I'd lost concentration because of something in the wings."
His dresser, Stewart Halbisch, as always, was a tower of strength. "He kept me sane throughout the whole run. I am deeply indebted to him," says Quast, who has a Halbisch drawing of him as Javert hanging proudly on his wall.
About halfway through the run, Quast admits he found himself drained, depressed and longing for the end. The news that there wouldn't be an Australian cast recording didn't help. Nor did various political rows. He handed his notice in earlier than he needed to leave the show at the end of his 12-month contract.
Then I began to enjoy it again," he says. "I was singing better because the end was in sight so I relaxed and became less paranoid about health. That building (the Theatre Royal) is an appalling place to work in . . . everyone would agree. It was probably the single hardest thing about doing Les Miz. One person gets sick and you all do, no matter how healthy you are. The flu epidemic almost closed the show. Lovely Ladies became Lovely Lady."
After five months away from the show, Quast is looking forward to playing Javert again and doing so in a new environment. He even went to see the production recently, though he doesn't like going to the theatre. "I saw the second act this week and Act one last week. It's too long-it was past my bedtime! I don't like being in a stuffy foyer or jammed up in a seat. I'm so tall that I can't get comfortable because I have to slouch forward all the time."
His reasons for agreeing to do the role in London for six months (he was offered a 12-month contract but refused) are, he says, personal rather than career-oriented. He certainly doesn't like the argument being put about by the publicity machine that Cameron Mackintosh is grooming him to be a future star.
"What may seem like false modesty or wariness is partly because I'm superstitious," says Quast. "I don't like the feeling of being patted on the back because there's always tomorrow. Anyway, it doesn't mean you will be right for the next part or that it would be my choice. I'm going to London because I love the part and because it doesn't extend me here anymore." Mindful of his reputation from the international cast recording, Quast is nervous about his London debut: "It would be nice to do it as quietly as possible.''
With no renovations to keep him busy in London. Quast will be looking for some other ''obsession''. One of his favourite pastimes is writing- he has already packed a collection of short stories based on his upbringing in the country, which he has been working on for some time but is finding difficult to finish. "How do you say they are finally done? But I must or they will just keep changing as I change."
Also in the suitcase will be a film script that has been in his bottom drawer for some time. "We (actors) are always working on them because, to be quite honest, we want to write the great part for ourselves. I've been writing this for a couple of years and I'm not very interested in playing it any more, which is something. I now feel it's a legitimate script. It's set on the North Coast hinterland amongst the mangrove swamps ... being away might give me a new objective way of looking at it."
Quast's love of the countryside is still very strong. "The things which make me an actor are not so much what I'm doing when I act as what I'm doing when I don't act.
That's where his passion for fishing and sailing - and co-owning a boat - come in: "The things I've seen out there (at sea) are more exciting than anything I've ever seen on a stage - marlin moving at 30 knots chasing flying fish, or being on a little boat near the rocks where the waves are breaking.
"That's the reason I am an actor. I can work for four weeks and then go and have fun for a while. No other job would give me that opportunity."
The depressing state of the environment has, however, recently dampened this pleasure. Quast wasn't even upset when his planned trip to Antarctica fell through. "I was passionate about it but I don't know that I want to see it anymore. I've seen the writing on the wall for a long time. Out on the trawler you - see so much pollution."
In his home, Quast likes to surround himself with his favourite plants - orchids and ferns - and when he returns from London his first task will be to tend the garden. "I'd actually like to live in a glass house with great wooden louvres which wind up and which on a sunny day open right up like Lost in Space," he says dreamily, contemplating the backyard. "Or I'd like a terrarium in that wall," he says indicating the kitchen and warming to his subject. "Thick glass with a little rainforest behind it with fish swimming in the bottom, green tree snakes, frogs and orchids. A whole little environment. I think it would be fascinating." He stops abruptly and blushes. "I must sound stupid. I'm not even waxing lyrical."
As for ambitions, Quast maintains that he doesn't plan too far ahead although, yes, he'd like to do The Phantom of the Opera. . . "but every man and his dog wants to do Phantom of the Opera". While he is in England, Quast would like to take voice classes and study Shakespeare. He would also like to work with Gale Edwards again in the future and "would give anything to work with Trevor Nunn."
Who knows, he may even make it to Antarctica when he returns from London - if it's still there.
We would like to thank Elizabeth for providing us with this article.
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