The Secret Garden
BATTLE OF THE BARITONES
(click on the image at left to see it full sized)
Melbourne Herald Sun/Thursday December 7, 1995
by Alison Barclay
The challenge was a duet that threatened to become a duel with Anthony Warlow.
What man dared compete against that celebrated baritone?
Only Philip Quast was unafraid--and the star of the musical The Secret Garden has never had a singing lesson.
"And I have smoked on and off," he adds.
Quast, a Shakespearean actor, Play School stalwart and veteran of Les Miserables,is back in Australia for one of his rare, but carefully chosen, singing jobs.
He and Warlow play brothers in love with the same woman, a rather hopeless situation because the object of their desire has been dead for a decade.
Eight times a week they pit their vocal power surges against each other in her elegy, 'Lily's Eyes'.
Fortunately, their uneasy fraternity is, off-stage, a firm friendship.
"It's not a matter of who sings loudest," Quast says.
"It's just very unusual to hear two baritone voices singing together. The brothers are soliloquizing at the same time. They are in completely separate worlds."
"It's like Norma. I saw Joan Sutherland and Marilyn Horne do the duet in that and it was remarkable," says Quast.
The Secret Garden is the English novel, written in 1911 by Frances Hodgson Burnett that, in 1991, became a Tony Award-winning American musical.
The story focuses on orphaned Mary Lennox who comes to live in her Uncle Archie's Yorkshire manor, where she enters a cloud of adult intrigue and interference.
Why has Archie (played by Anthony Warlow) kept a certain garden locked for 10 years? And why does his doctor borther, Neville, (Quast), want to keep her cousin Colin a permanent invalid?
Quast, when offered the role, was very wary. He hadn't liked Neville's touch of cruelty in the Broadway production.
"Neville was played as evil and Mary accuses him of locking Colin in a room and wanting the family money," Quast explains.
"I'm sure all these thoughts have entered his head, but I play him like he desperately loves his brother. He is the elder brother and that's his duty."
Quast came back to Australia for The Secret Garden's July opening in Brisbane, after more than two years in Britain performing with the Royal Shakespeare Company.
Refusing to be tied to one type of theatre, he picks roles that appeal to him and roams around surprisingly freely for someone who is married with three children under six.
"I just take it day for day," he says of his career.
"I have no ambitions in that sense. If you don't feel like doing it, then don't."
This attitude has meant that Quast and his family have seen little of the Sydney house they bought nine years ago.
They rent it out, are tenants in London, and live out of suitcases the rest of the time. As always, Quast shows no desire to stay put or come home for good.
"The other option is to stay here in Sydney and become sedentary..is that a word?" he asks without enthusiasm.
"The nature of theatre is that you rehearse for six weeks then go away from home."
"Doing The Secret Garden has been surprisingly a joyous experience, because you tend to get a bit cynical after a while."
"Doing eight shows a week requires a lot of discipline and I get tired. By the time we finish the Melbourne season I'll have had enough of musicals."
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