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Party Planning

Richard Greenberg discusses his latest play, The Injured Party, debuting at South Coast Rep's Pacific Playwrights Festival.

Reg Rogers in The Injured Party (Courtesy of SCR)

"As I wrote the various characters in the play, it actually woke up the appeal of it for me," says Greenberg. "I have a certain critical bent to my personality where if I know people love something, I tend not to. But I think I saw the point that they had a quality of refreshment for those who don't like the bleakness of winter -- which I do -- and transformed them into a different mood."

The play's central conflict, however, is not as much about art as money. 94-year-old Maxene (played by Cynthia Harris) has tons of it; her grandson Seth (Reg Rogers) wants it. Creating those characters was challenging and exciting, says Greenberg, who won the Tony Award for Take Me Out. Seth was not written expressly -- at least consciously -- for Rogers, who has starred in his Off-Broadway shows Hurrah at Last! and The Dazzle. "I do think that after the fact, I realized I had written it for him. Now, I don't even have the ability to imagine any other voice in this part. He gets me and knows how to play my work like no one else."

As for Maxene: "I've never written a 94-year-old woman before, but I kept thinking about Kitty Carlisle Hart whenever I needed inspiration," he says. "For the play, I wanted someone who would be unchangeable and unstoppable, who is dominating and domineering and simply defies age. That's what most confounds Seth about her. And I didn't make it an easy role just because I knew an older woman would play it. She's sharp as a tack and she has a lot of lines -- even a lot of parentheses."

 

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