Spring Break
"Matt and Ben" are portrayed in NY play
Issue date: 9/28/04 Section: Features
(U-WIRE) CHICAGO - Mindy Kaling and Brenda Withers love Ben Affleck and Matt Damon so much that they wrote a play about them.
The actress/playwrights penned the aptly titled "Matt & Ben" on the two buddies from Boston who were linked even before they wrote the Oscar-winning screenplay, "Good Will Hunting."
Their careers have since split the duo into distinct individuals, each continuing on their path of separate film work and celebrity girlfriends.
While the spotlight has inevitably focused more on Affleck, there is hardly an article written that fails to mention his former sidekick.
Kaling and Withers' "Matt & Ben" is a fictitious playing-out of events leading to the pair writing their Academy Award-winning script; or rather, as in the play, it falls onto Affleck's table.
"I believe that [Kaling and Withers] were originally friends who were sitting around and had an idea," said Christina Anthony, who portrays Affleck in the current production at the Theater Building, 1225 W. Belmont Ave. "They basically wrote it for themselves.
I think there is a rule in comedy that you're entitled to it if you wrote it. Basically, when Jam Theatricals wanted to do the show here, they replicated the casting the same way."
The women, acting as two recognizable and undeniably handsome celebrities, look absolutely nothing like their counterparts, which is arguably the point of such wayward casting.
Anthony shows Affleck as a 5-foot-7 inch African-American and Elizabeth Laidlaw is a tall, lanky, dark-haired Damon.
The short play is direct interaction between the friends who are attempting to adapt Catcher in the Rye into a screenplay before Good Will Hunting magically appears. Overall, the writing lacks the smart comedy that could have been based on these two idiosyncratic icons.
Kaling and Withers come off as having a bias for Damon.
The humor in portraying Affleck as moronic and unable to understand basic words and ideas wears thin after the first 10 minutes.
The actress/playwrights penned the aptly titled "Matt & Ben" on the two buddies from Boston who were linked even before they wrote the Oscar-winning screenplay, "Good Will Hunting."
Their careers have since split the duo into distinct individuals, each continuing on their path of separate film work and celebrity girlfriends.
While the spotlight has inevitably focused more on Affleck, there is hardly an article written that fails to mention his former sidekick.
Kaling and Withers' "Matt & Ben" is a fictitious playing-out of events leading to the pair writing their Academy Award-winning script; or rather, as in the play, it falls onto Affleck's table.
"I believe that [Kaling and Withers] were originally friends who were sitting around and had an idea," said Christina Anthony, who portrays Affleck in the current production at the Theater Building, 1225 W. Belmont Ave. "They basically wrote it for themselves.
I think there is a rule in comedy that you're entitled to it if you wrote it. Basically, when Jam Theatricals wanted to do the show here, they replicated the casting the same way."
The women, acting as two recognizable and undeniably handsome celebrities, look absolutely nothing like their counterparts, which is arguably the point of such wayward casting.
Anthony shows Affleck as a 5-foot-7 inch African-American and Elizabeth Laidlaw is a tall, lanky, dark-haired Damon.
The short play is direct interaction between the friends who are attempting to adapt Catcher in the Rye into a screenplay before Good Will Hunting magically appears. Overall, the writing lacks the smart comedy that could have been based on these two idiosyncratic icons.
Kaling and Withers come off as having a bias for Damon.
The humor in portraying Affleck as moronic and unable to understand basic words and ideas wears thin after the first 10 minutes.