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For our 24th anniversary, my husband brought us over to London to experience the West End. In ten days we saw 8 shows and slipped in a four day detour to France. The timing was set to correspond with the running of Evita. We had already purchased tickets to see the show the final Saturday in September when Elana Roger announced her vacation time. In addition to that show, we had purchased Spamalot tickets for the final night we would be in London on our way back from France towards home. That meant we couldn’t pick up tickets to see her perform the next week, either. Even though we were really interested in seeing Philip Quast in the show, we were still disappointed. After several weeks of debate, we cut a day from our France trip and bought tickets for Wednesday night’s show as well.
This put us in the audience on September 30th; if anyone else saw this show, you know that it was the audience from hell. To begin with, half way through 'You Must Love Me', a cell phone started ringing. One ring, that’s bad, but a stupid mistake. Two rings, a little slow. Three rings, turn the phone off. Four rings……………….by the time it got to five rings, doubt if anyone in the audience would have minded the actors on stage turning and yelling to turn it off!
Cut to a couple of minutes later and we are at the "You’re dying" scene. Front row, this old gentleman decides that he has to go, now! He gets up and shuffles out in front of everyone…….very slowly. When he finally gets to the side, he throws open the curtain in search of the men’s room and light floods the stage. But, as he goes out, he closes the curtain and the show goes on. "What do I do now" the curtain flies back open, there is no men’s room behind there. Finally, an usher comes down and helps the man to the back of the theater. Ah, the joys of performing for a live audience. We had the added side show of the man in the row in front of us arriving with one date, and leaving with two. Interesting country, England.
The show was incredible, in spite of the distractions. Wow! When the show was over, we went the side door, you know the one, the old gentleman showed it to us, and ended up in the back alley. Thanks to the PQ Guide, I knew that this was the alley where the stage door would be. I hadn't planned on looking for the alley that night because we were coming back the next week, but providence seemed to find it for us, so we decided to wait. There were a half dozen people waiting behind the theater. After less than 15 minutes Philip Quast came out. He said, "I'm late. I have to catch a train." Now, my American English translated that into "I won’t be signing any autographs tonight." I was starting to turn around to see where my husband was when he, Philip Quast, asked to borrow my pen. It is a good thing that he was pointing at it when I turned back, or I am not sure I would have had a clue what he was saying.
So I gave him my pen to use to sign everyone's memorabilia. By using my pen, he gave me an excuse to stay, which would have been difficult otherwise, since I already felt guilty about making him stay. 95% of my reason for staying was to get his autograph, the other 5% was to get my pen back. I had to pay $10.00 for that pen before we came to the show. The only place we could find a permanent marker was part of a set a couple of blocks from the theater. Having chaperoned teens to Broadway to see Shows, one of the things that we have taught them is never to ask for an autograph without a pen, because these actors don’t carry them around with them on the off chance someone will ask the for one. But on Broadway, every little shop sells Sharpies by the gross, because most theaters have 50-200 people waiting for autographs after each show. They actually set up queue lines with security and make quite a production of it.
Mr. Quast patiently signed autographs for the small crowd including a couple of young women who went on and on about how wonderful he was, and each took turns trading cameras and taking pictures. They reminded me of how excited my 16 year old son gets when he meets actors he admires. He would have been the same way, had he been there. When the girls were done, he turned to a man who was obviously getting his autograph to sell it. I was very impressed that again, he just very politely signed it, knowing exactly what it was for.
It has now been about 10-15 minutes since the "train" statement, Philip Quast is still standing behind the theater. By the time he was able to leave for the train, everyone, including myself, had autographs and photographs (and maybe a little guilt). As impressed as I was by his performance on stage, I was even more impressed by his patience and graciousness behind the theater that evening and in addition to great memories from our trip, I have a photo with Philip Quast with a nice smile on his face. Now that's a great actor!
By the way, when I got home my son asked my why we didn't get autographs on more than one night!
See Mary's Stage Door photos in the relevant section of your Photo Galleries!
