Olivier Award 1991

BLESSED WITH THE VOICE NEW IDEA

Magazine Australia

Philip Quast was at home in Sydney playing with his son when he heard he had won a coveted Laurence Olivier award in London.

His starring role in Stephen Sondheim's musical Sunday In The Park With George brought him the award for an outstanding performance by a musical actor, with Sondheim himself telling Philip he was "blessed with the voice" for the stage. Philip had the prospects of a glittering West End career ... from which he walked away.

"I got tired, I got homesick, we had a baby," says the 33-year-old.

He met his teacher wife nearly 15 years ago at university and they have been married for 10 years. "We probably were going to be people who never have children and then it happened. It's terrible to say it was an accident, but it was and it's wonderful," Philip says.

"I always had the feeling that if I had kids I would be trapped. I believe a lot of men feel like that. I don't feel it now. Our son has bonded our relationship in a way I never thought possible."

Back in Sydney, Philip walked straight into the ABC mini-series Brides Of Christ and other TV work. He did an Adelaide season in Les Miserables and has taken it-and his family-to New Zealand.

"We go everywhere together now, even if I'm away for a week or two," he says. "I haven't worked in New Zealand before. I want to be here as much for Rob Guest as anything. He is playing Valjean. He is a dear friend and a big star in New Zealand.

"It's a superb cast all round. But to tell the truth, I also want to see all those boiling mud pools."

London award, but actor still has some doubts

By BOB EVANS

The Sydney actor Philip Quast has received one of London's most prestigious theatre awards, the Olivier Award, for his role as the artist George Seurat in the musical Sunday in the Park with George.

The Society of West End Theatres has singled out Quast for the most outstanding performance in a musical or entertainment. The musical, inspired by Seurat's painting La Grande Jatte and written by Stephen Sondheim and James Lepine, also took out the award for best musical, in a weekend ceremony.

At his Sydney home yesterday, Quast said that he had completely forgotten about the awards until last Sunday night, when Jeremy Sams, the musical director for Sunday in the Park, had telephoned to ask him what he would like to say if he should win.

Quast assured Sams he wouldn't but instructed him, just in case, to simply say "Thank you".

Immediately after the awards ceremony Sams rang back to say that he had accepted the award on Quast's behalf and had shared the telephone call story with the VIP audience. Sams told Quast that the National Theatre would ship the award to Australia in a small crate "It's a bust of Olivier as Henry V. It is very heavy and very beautiful."

Quast first heard that he'd won from friends in London who were watching the ceremony on television and phoned him at 6 am on Monday. He went to London in 1989 at the invitation of the producer Cameron Mackintosh to play the role of Inspector Javert, which he had created to great acclaim in the Australian premiere of Les Miserables. Quast played the role for six months in the West End.

Toward the end of his contract he auditioned for Sunday in the Park with George. He auditioned four times -all of them bad - in his opinion. The last two were in front of Sondheim, the second of which turned into a music tutorial for the audition pianist, who was also struggling with the score.

Even now, having received the award, Quast is ambivalent about what it means. He says he feels a mixture of relief and embarrassment. "When my wife, Carol asked me how I felt I said 'Relieved. Now I don't have to tell people I didn't win it.' But it definitely makes s me think I want to go back. I was offered a role in Into the Woods after Sunday and Stephen Pimlot also offered me work at the Old Vic where he was going to direct two plays, Botho Straus's The Park and A Midsummer Night's Dream.

"But I got home-sick. What worries me is that when got Sunday in the Park people here were saying. 'Oh, you've made it.'We still have this notion that if it's 'over there' it's better. But I don't necessarily believe that the standard is usually better over there, at all," Quast said.

"I realise now that I spent all that effort trying not to be Australian for the first four or five weeks of the musical and that got in the way. Then in the last three weeks I stopped worrying about it. I stopped worrying about trying to hide the twang or being caught out because I don't think the English basically care. They are now so used to all sorts of people coming in and all sorts of different accents but, in my 16 months, when it suited them to rub my nose in being antipodean, they did it." said Quast.

THE SYDNEY MORNING HERALD 9 April 1991

Musical Phil's the toast of his peers

BY FRANK GAUNTLETT

OUTSTANDING Australian performer Philip Quast is the toast of London after capturing theatre world's equivalent of an Oscar. Against the toughest theatre competition in the world, Quast, whose family runs a turkey farm near Tamworth, won the Laurence Olivier Award for the outstanding performance of the year by an actor in a musical. The acclaimed performance was in the Royal National Theatre's production of Stephen Sondheim's Sunday In the Park With George.

And the modest Quast, 33, was so sure he would not see the precious statuette - a bust of Lord Olivier as Henry V-he had forgotten when the presentation was to be held. "I didn't think I had a chance," he said yesterday in Sydney. "It's a peculiarly difficult piece and personally I thought I could have done it better-I didn't really conquer it until the end."

Quast is probably best known for his work on the ABC program PlaySchool and award-winning role as the obsessive detective Javert in the smash hit musical Les Miserables.

THE DAILY TELEGRAPH MIRROR 9 April 1991

1998 Olivier Award

Second Olivier for Quast

By ANGELA BENNIE

The Australian actor Philip Quast has won his second "Olivier", Britain's top theatrical honour. Quast received the award for best actor in a musical for his performance as a cripple in the Donmar Warehouse Cameron Mackintosh production of The Fix. His previous Olivier was for Sunday in the Park with George in 1990.

According to his Sydney agent, Philomena Moore of International Casting, Quast was surprised at his win, possibly because of the show's mixed critical reception and its relatively short run at the Donmar. It did not transfer to the West End.

"No amount of fixing is going to fix The Fix. But you'll probably need one afterwards," was the Daily Telegraph's terse opinion on the matter.

"He was absolutely thrilled at receiving it because he wasn't expecting it at all," Moore said. "He was completely taken by surprise. But I have to say his performance was fantastic. It is not easy, you know, for a man of his height playing a cripple with a stutter who is gay who has to sing on crutches or in a wheelchair throughout the entire show!"

Quast, perhaps most memorable to Sydney audiences as Javert in the original production of Les Miserables as Aufidius to John Howard's Coriolanus in the Sydney Theatre Company's eponymous production, will remain in Britain to begin work on a television series.

The Sydney Morning Herald

Australia 18 February 1998