Matt & Ben

Critiqued by Holly Bartges

Celebrating its fifth year in Golden, Miners Alley Playhouse opened to a sell out crowd with Mindy Kaling and Brenda Withers’ highly acclaimed Off-Broadway hit Matt & Ben.

Missy Moore as Matt and Laura Norman as Ben in Matt & Ben

Based on the long-time friendship between Matt Damon and Ben Affleck, the trumped up spoof wraps itself around friendship. Asking how far the rubber band of friendship can be stretched before snapping and putting someone’s eye out? With personalities as different as day and night, hardboiled eggs and scrambled, drought and flood, it is wondrous there could be a friendship at all. Friendships tend to get bound together by some tough rubber bands; in this case admiration of each other’s talent and ability. Patience, tolerance, understanding definitely get pushed to the sidelines, while the burlesqued spotlight shimmers with speeding one-liners, hysterical tripped up moments, and complicated communicated misunderstandings.

While the play takes giggling pot shots stripping personalities down to the core, revealing even the seeds, this fun-tossed parody takes a couple of extra steps written for two women to perform, and Miners Alley chose the perfect twosome.

The very pretty animated actor Missy Moore pulls back her hair, stretches her facial muscles into consistent stoic apprehension, thrusts her pelvis in all directions with that male chauvinistic “Me Tarzan; You, Jane” climate as Matt. With large bright eyes, an unswerving laid back smile and loose jointed gangly arms and legs, Laura Norman slips into the laid back persona of Ben thoroughly enjoying happy gum chewing. The two of them are simply Happy Magic together.

Matt, the eager beaver go-get-‘em determined type of guy wrestles figuratively and psychologically with the somewhat lazy laidback let’s-take-it-as-it-comes Ben. Matt doesn’t think Ben can write, making no bones about telling him straight out. Ben only brushes the upside down compliment off his shoulders, smiling and chewing. If Matt really believes that, why does he hang in there while they attempt to transform J. D. Salinger’s Catcher In The Rye into a screenplay? There’s a willingness to plow through the superficial because somewhere, somehow something great could emerge. An interesting thought to ponder while Moore and Norman tease the giggles to surrender to amusing laughability.

Our culture obsesses over celebrities. The Paparazzi drives them to distraction. When one happens to lose it in front of a camera shoved in their face, we wonder what happened. Where are they going? Oh, only to the store? What are they buying? Gosh, she’s not as beautiful as she is on screen. What? She’s wearing shorts with head tied up in a scarf? Oh, oh she almost dropped her baby. Someone had better call Protective Services. What? He punched out the photographer’s lights? Good Grief! I thought he was a Greek God? Would a Greek God snarl that way? What’s wrong with him? Now that Damon and Affleck are household names, what were they like before the Paparazzi hounded them?

Kaling and Withers, who knew them in school long before fame wrapped them in see-through Teflon, provide a very funny glimpse into their lives prior to co-writing the 1997 Oscar Winner, Good Will Hunting.

Directed by Keith Dixon from Baton Rouge, Louisiana, who once called Denver home, he captured Moore and Norton’s natural comedic timing and ability then turned them loose on Sarah Roshan’s deliberate messy set representing Affleck’s Somerville, Massachusetts’ apartment in 1995. Surrounded by old unmatched furniture, opened potato chip bags, and pizza boxes nestling under tables, or shelves, anywhere it’s convenient to drop or throw them. Although Roshan only laughed and said, “It’s easy to be messy” she captured a bachelor’s not- House-Beautiful-apartment to a tee.

Employing a variety of comedic techniques including the Vaudevillian break from the scenes to address the audience, Matt and Ben attempt to explain how the script Good Will Hunting fell into their hands out of the sky, an incident that both tickles them and scares them. Once the script has fallen from the rafters, the theatrical trick can’t be duplicated so Matt simply throws the script to the floor as they reenact their sacred “startledness”. A script already written with their names on it? Where did it come from? Much of the two-act play has to do with their avoiding it, ignoring it, obsessing over it, fighting over it, throwing it out, and eventually coming to grips with the script that would not leave them alone. Matt agrees it is a good script, which means to him, Ben couldn’t have written it.

While Ben is out of the room, Matt answers a knock at the door to find Gwyneth Paltrow (Norman) paying a visit. Slinking around the room, licking frosting off a cupcake, she chatters in a nonsensical way as Matt struggles to recover from the Paltrow stun gun.

Feeling the need to hide an audition from Ben he has for the play Buried Child, Matt stumbles over made-up excuses keeping the taunt deadpan in check.

As frustration nearly comes to blows, Matt throws the Good Will Hunting script out the door. Both are freaked when a knock at the door reveals only the script lying there. Matt, at this point, is convinced they are all going to die and heads for the bedroom to hide. Ben attempts to calm tangled nerves as the knocking persists. This time it is Salinger (Moore) standing there with the nagging script in hand. Yea, the script is funny all of the way through, but Moore’s exaggerated posing for Salinger is more than hysterical. He wants pudding. He lets Ben know in no uncertain terms he doesn’t give out the rights to Catcher after leading her on a wild goose chase. Some of the funniest outlandish moments come with Salinger and Ben saying nothing while Salinger struts around the room licking pudding from a cup.

Flashbacks into another time are introduced with the change of lighting designed by Karalyn Pytel. One takes them back to a senior high talent show where somehow the unlikely two collaborate. Ben the class clown, Matt taking his guitar ballad seriously, and yet somehow the twisted relationship won them the competition.

The play by itself is a stitch and a hoot with built in honest laughs, off the wall one-liners, and crazy concoctions simply because sometimes friends aren’t willing to just be frank and honest. Cover-ups do get turned upside down and inside out. Freaky unexplained situations wring out the weirdest reactions, but the greatest part of this production is what Moore and Norman do with every moment on stage. Subtle changes of expressions, raised eyebrows, Ben playing with his baseball cap, Matt’s changing expressions through the deadpan, the complexity of their misguided relationship hanging loosely on the hooks of mutual admiration. The play brilliantly written, precisely directed, Moore and Norman add a dimpled shine to the brilliance. It’s fun. It’s funny. It’s a riot adding its own insight into solid relationships that aren’t afraid to throw a punch or two.

For honest giggles down to the toes, Matt & Ben should definitely, absolutely be on the Must See list. While you’re at it, wish Miners Alley a Happy Fifth Birthday in Golden with many, many, many more to come.

Matt & Ben

By Mindy Kaling & Brenda Withers; Directed by Keith Dixon