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Interviews
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Philip Quast - Making French Connections 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 artLa 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". La Cage Aux Folles previews at the Menier Chocolate Factory from 27th November, 2007.
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