Or, as Wright said on the phone from Los Angeles, "Everything is always somebody's fault, but rarely anybody's intention."
Felix Artifex (his Latinate name means "happy creator," Wright said) has produced plenty of schlock in his day, but he's currently working on a deal to secure a Big Movie Star - or even two Big Movie Stars - for a Major Broadway Show about the French Revolution written by somebody named Steven. We never actually see or hear Steven, or either of the stars, or any of their agents, or Felix's ex-wife, or some revolutionaries in a Middle Eastern desert, or a slew of other characters we get involved with through Felix's phone conversations. Mistakes Were Made, at Plays and Players Theatre, is essentially a 100-minute monologue (there is a walk-on secretary, as well as an endearing fish named Denise who is Felix's confidante).
How do you learn such a role? Little by little, says Greer, one or two lines at a time, over and over - several hours every morning before rehearsals begin at noon. Making this staggering memory task even more daunting was the week of overlap with Pig Iron Theatre Company's recent production of Twelfth Night, in which Greer played Feste, the Fool. (The roles, it turns out, are not dissimilar.)
One of the city's most impressive actors, Greer shows surprising range: Pangloss in Sondheim's Candide, Mitch in Williams' Streetcar Named Desire, the analysand in Conor McPherson's Shining City (which included a 35-minute monologue), to barely begin the list. He notes that one of the pleasures of having a career in Philadelphia is that he hasn't been typecast and so has chance after chance to "stretch his muscles."
