Philip Quast's quest ends in the Park (with George)
By Michele Field, Vogue Australia March 1990
The upward spiral of Philip Quast's stage career is suddenly so steep, 'I'm shitting myself'. This is 'Silly Philip', the eight year veteran of Playschool, who did pratfalls and excelled at idiocy; this is also the star of Stephen Sondheim's new Royal National Theatre production, the hottest March opening in London: Sunday in the Park with George. Quast had never seen a Sondheim production, but Sondheim saw him and that clinched it.
Quast, thirty-two, has been in London nearly a year and has serious bouts of homesickness. His wife, Carol, expects their first baby in on the opening night of Sunday in the Park.
To dissipate some of the tension around his stage work Quast spends a Sunday that's warm enough quietly beachcombing the banks of the Thames.
Until early December he had played more than 600 performances as Javert, the policeman in Les Misérables, first in Australia and then in London. He faces a four-month run at the National, then another long contract when, as is likely, Sunday in the Park transfers to the West End. He is tired, apprehensive about 'maybe failing' and more than politely self-deprecating. Smiling cautiously he says, 'All my Australian friends have been very excited for me. It makes you feel a bit like a traitor.'
Initially he wouldn't accept a twelve-month contract with the London production of Les Misérables (he took six months) because he couldn't envisage living a year away from Australia. 'It hasn't been easy here. I'm an outsider and in Les Miz I didn't handle some things well politically.'
If there was no love lost between him and the Les Miz ensemble, his fans made up for it. He is embarrassed even listing some of the tokens of affection he receives: "a signet ring and a watch from a girl in Scotland, paintings and tapestries, all kinds of presents. It is really quite strange: I've had to make myself get used to it."
Despite his audiences, Philip Quast is a largely unknown name to London critics. Sunday in the Park is crucial for him, a role in which he is not just a dark-eyed, romantic-looking Australian import. (Boyish swagger is out; as we approach the end of the century it is too fresh-faced for European tastes.) Quast, with his untanned yet muscled arms, wearing a shapeless T-shirt which has washed from whatever colour it was to muddy-purple, certainly looks as if he can play a firm-minded Frenchman and an American.
He has two lead roles in Sunday in the Park with George. George is the impressionist pointillist George Seurat and his painting A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte, which hangs in the Art Institute of Chicago, is the inspiration for the musical's title. Seurat was an enigmatic man, Quast says, who died at the age of thirty-one. Act One is a fictionalised story of his life, and Act Two is the life story of his grandson, an artist in Chicago in 1984, whom Quast also portrays. One of his favourite songs is Putting it Together, about the politics of art, the exhibitions and the cocktails, all of which drive the young artist to a crisis point.
The more awkward and unlikeable of the two Georges is the contemporary one, but that is the one Quast identifies with. "I like the George who has lost sight of where he's going. 'Spreading his vision in every direction', he says, 'jack-of-all trades and master of none'. I can relate to that. I think it is the dilemma of all artists. Certainly something Sondheim has had to deal with too."
The soft angst in Quast's voice didn't come from a childhood on his parents' turkey farm in Tamworth, NSW. He went to a one-teacher school and discovered theatre only at university in Armidale. He trained at NIDA and in 1980 and 1981 he was a "spear-carrier" with the South Australian Theatre Company Then he returned to Sydney and an assortment of soap operas, telemovies, plays and theatre-in-education.
"Silly Philip" is a wondeful singer and a very good actor. He writes fiction and is learning to draw "just for the hell of it. I am terrible, I don't understand it at all, but I think it makes me relax a bit and understand artists like Seurat." If he weren't spreading his vision in the direction of the stage, singing, writing and drawing, he might be taking a long-promised trip on a supply ship to Antarctica. "I've had these dreams about wanting to be adventurous ."
Meanwhile he has cut a tape with Jon English for a new Australian musical about the Trojan Wars, Paris. He sings the role of Patroclus on the recording but may be unavailable when the Paris cast gives a concert performance at the Entertainment Centre in Sydney in May. The longer we talk, the more he says how he longs to come home.
Is there one thing that makes him more nervous than another? "The baby," he says without hesitation. "Because Gorge and the birth are all happening around the same time. But I do have friends here who are willing to be at the birth if I can't." He is unconvinced that eight years on Playschool shows he has an aptitude with children. "That was just fun, being naughty on camera," he says. "But being a father is very different."
[UPDATES] [BIOGRAPHY] [ARTICLES & INTERVIEWS ] [ STAGE ][ FILM & TV ][AUDIO/VIDEO ] [ LINKS] [SCRAPBOOK] [ HOME ]
© Kate McCullugh & Angela Pollard 2000. No portion of this page may be copied without permission of the author.