Brenda Withers and Mindy Kaling’s Matt and Ben is a teasingly wry script. Like so much television sketch comedy, it’s here today, but will probably be gone not too long after tomorrow, without the benefit of syndicated reruns. Still, since making its mark in a 2003 off-Broadway production, the play has toured successfully and enjoyed popular regional mountings. Withers and Kaling created the original onstage roles, which featured two females taking on the delicious task of portraying overexposed Hollywood actors Matt Damon and Ben Affleck in their “down” period of 1995, after both had tasted some cinematic success (mostly through a film called School Ties) but were scuffling for wider recognition, bigger roles and more serious paydays.
In the People’s Branch Theatre’s new production of Matt and Ben at the Belcourt Theatre, Tia Shearer and Amanda Bailey deliver delightfully playful renditions of the famed acting duo. Likewise, co-directors Matt Bassett and Matt Chiorini have produced a staging that will surely have special appeal to film fans and pop-culturists, who can all relate to the authors’ none-too-veiled sarcastic skewering of what is obviously seen as the annoying Damon-Affleck franchise.
The setting is Affleck’s Somerville, Mass., apartment, a typically unkempt man-pit of a place full of tacked-up movie posters, old pizza boxes and sports equipment. The struggling duo are haltingly working on a screenplay of J. D. Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye—Matt reads the book aloud while Ben types—when, suddenly, the screenplay for Good Will Hunting lands cosmically in their laps.
In the original Withers-Kaling script, the Good Will Hunting manuscript literally drops from the theater rafters onto the set. The People’s Branch production has it delivered in the form of a whimsical, gaily tip-toeing fairy, who places it ever so gingerly onto the floor. For Ben and Matt, as we all know, the rest will be film history.
Of course, in real life, Damon’s and Affleck’s lives and careers have diverged significantly. While money is no longer a problem for either Damon or Affleck, clearly the former is making better-received films and has quietly married a non-celebrity, while the latter has consistently taken heat from movie critics and been the butt of tabloid jokes. Perhaps not surprisingly, Matt and Ben portrays Damon as a smart and savvy fellow, while Affleck is seen as a dull-witted pretty-boy jock. The implication is clear: Affleck probably wasn’t the guy who wrote Good Will Hunting.
All the same, the script’s miraculous appearance here serves as a catalyst, inspiring Matt and Ben to explore their friendship while dropping all sorts of personal and familiar clues. (“I have a thing for Latin women,” says Ben, foreshadowing his J-Lo period. Meanwhile, Matt skulks off to rehearsals for a new play without wanting Ben to know for fear of his jealous reaction.)
As Matt and Ben ponder what to do with the magical screenplay—Matt is all too cognizant that his name gets first billing—there are silly, ghostly visitations from Salinger and Gwyneth Paltrow, which are ripe-enough comical ideas and induce smiles if not big guffaws.
The People’s Branch production is itself a Matt-and-Matt affair (Bassett and Chiorini share directing duties), and it’s unclear whose imprint is dominant. Regardless, both seem content to let leading ladies Bailey and Shearer find their own farcical ways through their tongue-in-cheek interpretations.
While Act One is never actually dull, there are patches of dialogue that seem more curious than witty; and it takes time to figure out where Bailey and Shearer are going with their characters. There’s also at least one superficial disconnect: the blondish Bailey plays the brown-haired Affleck, and the brown-haired Shearer plays the blondish Damon. (Of course, this play lends itself to a certain non-literal freedom, since women play the roles of men.)
Shearer and Bailey capture the essence of their characters. They have fun with a flashback to high school high jinks, do an entertaining reading from the Good Will Hunting script (Bailey does a very funny Affleck-as-Minnie Driver) and even engage in faux fisticuffs. Despite all the lampooning, though, Matt and Ben conveys an unfailing sense of friendship. It’s big satire with a little heart.
Tamiko Robinson fills the support roles—as Salinger, as Paltrow and as the mincing fairy/delivery girl—and she’s delightfully kooky doing them all.
Matt and Ben is usually performed in one 60-minute act without interruption. People’s Branch has inserted an intermission, which doesn’t really hurt anything (and probably helps to sell a few beers at the Belcourt). It’s an offbeat but amusing theater experience, which should appeal to anyone cued into the random mystery of celebrity in the media-intensive age.
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