Review: Unerring imitations make audiences laugh at “˜Matt and Ben’
By Fay Gordon
April 14, 2004 9:00 p.m.
Matt Damon: We’re going to be famous! I’m gonna meet
Spielberg, Scorcese. …
Ben Affleck: Yeah! I’m going to meet Daisy Fuentes. I like
Latin women.
Who knows if this conversation ever actually took place? Writers
Mindy Kaling and Brenda Withers certainly don’t, but that
didn’t stop them from sticking it in their fresh off-Broadway
comedy “Matt and Ben,” currently running at the Acme
Comedy Theatre.
Directed by David Warren, the play attempts to answer one of the
greatest film mysteries of all time: Who really wrote “Good
Will Hunting”? Who was more responsible, Damon or Affleck? In
Kaling and Withers’ spin on the story, the script magically
falls into their laps from the ceiling of Affleck’s
apartment, sending them on their way to Hollywood stardom.
The play, also starring Kaling and Withers as Affleck and Damon
respectively, takes audiences back before the Oscar triumph, before
the debacle that was “Bennifer,” after their business
meetings in a cafeteria to Boston, 1995, in Affleck’s Red Sox
paraphernalia- and pizza-filled apartment. The two New Englanders
are struggling to adapt “The Catcher in the Rye” when
the script for “Good Will Hunting” appears.
For fans of the famous pair, it’s hard not to be a little
disappointed as the play opens. Instead of the actual Damon
sporting the Harvard sweatshirt/khakis combination and the
real-life Affleck sounding out the words in “Catcher,”
audiences get Withers and Kaling. There is that unthwarted glimmer
of hope that when the lights go on, the real Damon and Affleck will
appear instead of two female pretenders. When the play warms up,
audiences are quickly enlivened by Kaling and Withers’
dead-on imitations of Affleck and Damon, suspending reality for an
hour or so.
Withers’ portrayal of Damon as an uptight perfectionist,
who recites the entire history of the song “Bridge Over
Troubled Water” in a flashback scene of his 12th grade talent
show, is so, well, perfect, leaving audiences cringing and
laughing. When Damon smashes Affleck’s framed self-portrait
in their final brawl, Kaling’s blank look of horror far
surpasses that of Affleck’s own look in “Jersey
Girl.”
It’s striking how much audiences already know about the
superpublicized duo, so when Gwyneth Paltrow (Kaling transforming
from track suit-clad Affleck to Paltrow in leather) threatens Damon
with a beating from her 5-foot-7 boyfriend Brad, audiences giggle,
thinking “Oh, Gwyneth, you and Brad are so 10 years
ago” ““ as if Paltrow and the audience are old
friends.
This is what’s spectacular about the play – it picks up on
the actors’ nuances and shows audiences just what they wish
they’d known. What other play has J.D. Salinger explaining
the directing merits of John Woo to a perplexed Affleck?
It’s not necessary to know everything about Damon and
Affleck to leave the play dizzy from laughter. What Kaling and
Withers have fabricated is one of the most original and amusing
comedies of the year.
-Fay Gordon
