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Interviews
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Philip Quast - Part II Philip Quast plays Georges in La Cage Au Folles which starts previewing at the Menier Chocolate Factory this week. This is the second part of an interview with Sandra Giorgetti which took place earlier in this month.
Quast's views on critics are on record. He is no less forthright about the plethora of web blogs on which anyone and everyone can become a theatre commentator. Whilst he accepts "there is some good - critics have to be a bit more on the ball because they are being blogged too", he admits to not reading reviews or surfing the web - not because he doesn't care what they say, but because he does. "Someone asked me 'did you read the Todd blog on you that said you were a bit out of time musically?' People have come to expect absolute precision in everything - you have to be absolutely perfect - you can't forget your words, your lines. My god! Do they have any idea what it's like?" The natural segue to that was to talk about his recent associations with the work of Sondheim. This summer saw a short run of Sweeney Todd at the Royal Festival Hall in which Quast played the Judge. This was preceded by a one-night charity gala of Follies. Both were billed as concerts but were in fact largely staged, missing only the sets. For the audience Follies had all the glamour and excited atmosphere one would expect of such a star-filled evening. The load borne by the four leads who, in the event, had to learn full parts for a single performance, was disproportionate. One of these was Quast who had the role of Ben. I was moved by the honesty and openness with which Philip Quast talked about these productions. He said of Sweeney Todd that "to sing with Bryn [Terfel] was a thrill" but described the whole event as "one of the worst experiences I have ever had in my life" and explained how it came about: "I did the Follies concert because that's a part I have never thought about playing but I almost felt slightly ambitious, I could imagine that part fitting me like a glove. "But the pressure - people go not knowing the circumstances under which you rehearse; you're flying by the seat of your pants, you only get to work with the orchestra that day. I really need musical rehearsal in order to do the acting I want to do, and I need rehearsal musically. I have never been so frightened as that night of the Follies concert - to do that breakdown scene having never rehearsed it with the orchestra, and I did get out of time because I don't have the musicianship to fall back on. "And I said that I will never do that again, then the Sweeney Todd one comes up; but I had lost my nerve. Then I thought, 'No, I cannot get so frightened that I cannot go on'; you've got to keep putting your head on the block, so I did it. "It was just very, very, very difficult. We had only a week's rehearsal … the Festival Hall is an acoustic space and microphones don't go there; and you have the orchestra way over to one side which was a terrible mistake. The monitors aren't anywhere, a conductor who never looks up ever, ever, never watches the performers - in a piece like that … musically I was a bit out. The fear when you get up there..." Quast trails off and pours another coffee. Often for reasons of timing and/or sensibility one of the Judge's songs is cut even though it influences the characterisation. Known as 'the flagellation song', as its name suggests, it is a challenging piece to interpret - in this instance it became an impossibility: "I knew I was in trouble because I was due to do the flagellation song, but I was way over the other side of the stage, no monitor, a delay hearing the orchestra, and I disagreed with the MD about how fast it was to go." Quast sings slowly, "Johanna, so suddenly a woman, the light behind your window, it penetrates your gown …" He fades off, his head nods and he starts snoring, then laughing. "He was saying it was an operatic aria, I wanted it moving." He sings again, beating an urgent but steady pace with his fingers. "We couldn't agree. My acting instincts were telling me it had to go faster and he would not. We got to the stage where we could not reconcile it and it was cut." He apologises and asks if, unintentionally, he sounds like Michael Ball giving the show the Kismet treatment: "You think thank goodness we got through it, but the relief is not enough reason to do it the next time. I was in fact going to have been doing the Barbara Cook charity concert. I thought people will be paying £150 a ticket, you know and I feel that people are slightly being exploited." However difficult those experiences, there is another concert in the diary, this time with a very different arrangement. "This piece comes with no expectations, it's a brand new piece. There are no comparisons, they can't compare me, I can't compare me. I just have to try to make it work on its own. People will either like it or they won't." May 2008 finds him at the Barbican Hall for the world premiere of Tsunami, a piece by award-winning composer Dominic Muldowney. Quast reports it as being "the hardest thing I have ever heard in my life" and he has only received two of the songs so far. "It is such difficult music and it scares the shit out of me. Once Cage opens my whole time will be spent working on that. It's a very challenging thing but I have a little bit more control with it. With the other concerts I had no control." Follies and Sweeney Todd aside, Philip Quast has been busy with other things and also had some fun this year. June saw him at the Adelaide Cabaret Festival where he appeared as a special guest in An Evening with Jeremy Sams and caught some shows. "Adelaide was a real education - the parameters of what cabaret is now. I was amazed. A lot of the cabaret I saw is political, when I say 'political' it has an emotional truth about it so that the audience comes out feeling like they have gone on a journey somewhere, or seen someone who knows something that they don't. You have to have something to say." Given his evident pleasure at the memory of the Festival it is unsurprising that doing another cabaret of his own is on his "to do" list. "As you get older it gets harder. I will love La Cage but the thought of actually having to do it eight times a week is just horrible… I would really like to do a cabaret show, but I need to do that eight shows a week in order to be able to do what I want to do." EpiphanyWhilst in Adelaide, he held a master class in front of an audience of over 200. For Quast, who turned 50 this year, the significance of it taking place on the stage where he started his professional career did not go unnoticed. "I told this story about how this was the very stage where I had played Adam in The Wakefield Mystery Plays. I explained here is the place, nearly 30 years ago, I took my pants down and I walked down here and I was at the front of the stage completely naked and a woman in the first row screamed! About three days later I got a letter addressed to me at the theatre - I presume it was from this woman - it said, 'I thought you were wonderful as Adam but do you realise that Adam wouldn't have been circumcised?' It brought the house down. Jokes aside, it is self-evident that teaching is very important to him but he is sceptical about the way things are going: "Drama schools are about theatre craft, and I hate the fact that there's differentiation - that you can do a musical theatre course. Musical theatre people do have a hang up about acting and acting people tend to dismiss musical theatre - but it takes all the skills in the world to do it properly. "A while ago, I did an exercise where I took a combined class and worked on some Shakespeare; when the musical theatre kids got up and did it they were fantastic because they obeyed all the rules of musicality and rhythm and everything. When the acting kids got up to do Shakespeare they were shocking - they tried to make it naturalistic. "Paradoxically the acting kids, because they were frightened of singing, stuck to the rhythm and did everything right and brought all the acting to it and they sang their songs better than the musical theatre kids who tried to embellish it with back-phrasing and stuff." Quast breaks into song, musical twiddling really, smiles and asks if I understand "and to do little things like that, it was almost an epiphany for them. Musical theatre requires at its best all the skills."
I suggest that as a natural consequence of his teaching he might try his hand at directing. Without any false modesty Quast says, "The thing about the teaching, the reason I love it and the reason I think I'm pretty good at it, is that I am prepared to admit that I don't know anything. I love rehearsals beyond belief. When you start rehearsals you go back to scratch. You know nothing… and it's very humbling - now how that does equate to directing? I don't know. I think I've left it too late … I might do some." The cafetière is empty again and reluctantly I feel the need to bring our long talk to a conclusion. One question still nags in my head - what is there left still to do? Without hesitation comes "I would love to be back at the RSC. The idea of doing the classics, Shakespeare - I'm not great at it - but as an actor it is the most fulfilling thing of everything you can do. Eight performances a week become pleasurable because there is so much to explore. The thing about musicals is after the rehearsal period is over you're locked in by the discipline of it. "I want to write more. I would like to start doing my own creative things, my carpentry. I'd like to have my own orchard. Explore other parts of my life. I don't want to step back, I'd like to be able to find a way of stepping forward - toward an inner fulfilment. "I have come to a time in my life where I'd give anything to be able to have a 9 to 5 job so that I can do 'something of my own' - he sings unsentimentally from Sunday in the Park - 'Through to something new, Something of my own'. I am exactly at that point, almost a George point in my life where I want to be able to do something of my own …" La Cage Aux Folles previews at the Menier Chocolate Factory from 27th November, 2007.
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