[NoHo Arts District, CA] – A NoHo Arts theatre review of Please Like Us Productions’ Matt & Ben, written by Mindy Kaling and Brenda Withers and directed by Max Downs at The Sherry Theatre through September 5.
It has always been a well-known and much-disproven rumor that Matt Damon and Ben Affleck didn’t actually write the film Good Will Hunting even after they both won the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay in 1998.
Mindy Kaling and Brenda Withers wrote Matt and Ben as a riff on the rumors and a poke at the ease at which white men find success in Hollywood. They also wrote it for themselves to star in, and so both roles in the play should be and always are played by women. Which is in and of itself extremely funny and brilliantly ironic. All these wonderful actresses, searching for their own place in the still unambiguously chauvinistic entertainment industry, changing the game for themselves… just a little.
Matt and Ben is set in Ben’s apartment, with a duct-taped roadside couch, scattered pizza boxes and oddly spaced posters and pictures on the faded walls. A typical “boys’ apartment” in the 90s, or honestly, pretty much any era. While the two of them work on Ben’s dream of wrestling a screenplay from the iconic and revered Catcher in the Rye, Matt, newly home from Harvard and a touch snotty, tries to convince Ben that although he admires his determination, they could never get the rights and that he should focus on becoming an action star.
While in the midst of their gritty lives as struggling actors and wannabe filmmakers, a miracle arrives in the shape of a completed screenplay, Good Will Hunting, literally falling from the sky. Or rather, dropping from the ceiling of Ben’s grubby den. Astonished and more than a little bit terrified, Ben reads it, loves it and shares it with Matt, who has a similar reaction. Namely that he is petrified while also being full of the realization that this could be their ticket to the big leagues.
Matt and Ben is centered around the back-and-forth they both go through, between rejecting the gift altogether and understanding just how life-changing it could be. Along the way, they each fall into several ‘dazes’ and are visited by characters outside of their present lives, but intrinsic to their existence now and also in their future, such as the comic visit Matt has with Gwyneth Paltrow or Ben with J.D. Salinger. All these weird and wonderful twists and turns contribute to the overall magical realism of the play, but without being too precious or kitschy.
Matt and Ben is a funny, clever and utterly original ode to the myth of creativity in show business, which is wild if you consider it owes this myth its very existence. Very existential!
The performances were brilliant and perfectly balanced between the seriousness of Matt and the juvenility of Ben. Spring Ferrara plays Ben Affleck with his sticky charm and Genevieve Lerner plays Matt Damon as stubborn and a little bit of a narcissist. Obviously, they bear very little physical similarities to these two movie stars. However, they have invented a kind of weirdly compelling and convincing essence of the two men. We know exactly who they are. We understand the choices they have made in playing them. And for about an hour and a half, happily with no intermission, we accept that these two actresses are, in fact, Matt and Ben. That is the magic of theatre, I suppose. For even though this is a parody of epic proportions, we have to believe or it doesn’t work at all. And believe I did…willingly and with absolutely no argument. Bravo!!!!!
This was clearly a team effort and the team itself was very present in the theatre and throughout the performance, which I thought was lovely. Putting on a play takes an extraordinary amount of energy, talent and endurance, no matter the size of the show or the length of the run. Theatre mostly exists through sheer force of will in the end, and these adorable and profoundly committed people have that by the bucket load.
Support our remaining local theatres and see this funny and wildly wonderful play!!!
Tickets:
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/matt-and-ben-tickets-1990745462267
When:
July 31- September 5
Fridays and Saturdays at 8PM
Where:
The Sherry Theatre
11052 Magnolia Blvd NoHo