NEW YORK — Ben AFFLECK can't stop complaining.
Not about the anemic box-office returns of "Gigli." Not about his on-again, off-again marriage to Jennifer Lopez. This time, the young actor, strangely impersonating Gwyneth Paltrow, is railing against Brad Pitt and David Schwimmer. Pitt, he says, can't read, and Schwimmer can't act. And Affleck's supposed best friend for life, Matt Damon? Well, he's a lying ingrate.
A tell-all interview in US Weekly? Secretly recorded conversations from a Vancouver strip club? No, Affleck's barbs come from the phenomenally popular play "Matt & Ben," a new satire playing at a 100-seat theater in New York's East Village.
The creation of two recent Dartmouth drama grads, "Matt & Ben" is the theatrical perfect storm of three intersecting fronts. Firstly, the play arrives just as celebrity culture has reached, depending on your outlook, its apex or nadir (see: California's gubernatorial election). Secondly, the show has at its center the current poster child of tabloid excess. Finally, the play has an irresistible marketing hook: Affleck and Damon are both played by women.
Clocking in at barely a few minutes over an hour, "Matt & Ben" is deceptively simple. The setting is Affleck's unadorned Massachusetts apartment living room, the year 1995. Neither Affleck nor Damon is yet a star. In fact, the two are struggling screenwriters, and as the story opens they are adapting -- "transcribing" is the more fitting word -- J.D. Salinger's "Catcher in the Rye." But just as the play begins, a gift literally falls from the sky: the completed script for "Good Will Hunting."
Is it a sign from God? Playwrights and actors Mindy Kaling (who plays Affleck) and Brenda Withers (Damon) are less interested in questions of divine intervention than in exploring how the comfort of old friendships can be tested by the prospect of quick fame.
The play's Damon is tempted to present "Good Will Hunting" as the pair's own work, even though they haven't yet written a word of it. After all, it's a really good script, a perfect Hollywood calling card. "It's brilliant, it's got a part for you -- it's complete," Damon says. "Who thinks the smart choice is wasting the day eating junk food, copying down some lines from an old book, committing plagiarism?"
Well, Affleck does. And that's basically the whole play, outside of whimsical visits from Paltrow and Salinger. In debating their ethical options, the longtime pals realize that maybe they're not such a perfect pair after all.
