B efore this week, we knew everything the average citizen needed to know about Matt Damon and Ben Affleck. Or so we thought. The story, as we understood it, was this: two friends from Boston write and star in a schmaltzy movie with Robin Williams. Over the next seven years, they become Hollywood royalty thanks to a few lucky breaks, a vaguely homoerotic friendship and a series of celebrity romances. The greatest generation had Bob Hope and Bing Crosby; we have Ben and Matt. Which makes us wonder, what will they call our generation years from now?

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     The good news: in the meantime, we have Matt and Ben, a bioplay which recently began a six-week, off-Broadway run at New York's PS 122. It's the duo's best work by far — all they provided was the inspiration.
    We decided to prepare for our evening of theatre by renting Good Will Hunting, which neither of us had actually seen. Unfortunately, none of our neighborhood video stores seemed to have it on DVD, so we substituted episodes of The Robyn Byrd Show and VH-1's Celebrity Haircuts.

Pictured: Brenda Withers as Matt Damon (at door) and Mindy Kaling as Ben Affleck in Matt & Ben. (Photo: Robert Zash)

    Honestly, that was probably adequate preparation. You don't need to know much about Matt, Ben or their history to understand the play. It's a story as old as time. Just as ancient cultures turned to mythology to explain the inexplicable, Matt and Ben posits the idea that Hollywood success is another phenomenon beholden to the whims of the gods. In Act One, the completed script for Good Will Hunting falls from the ceiling of Ben Affleck's apartment. Both characters perceive this as fate, and debate ensues: Can they take credit for this script? Can they both take credit for it? Who gets to play the lead role? Can they coast on the probable success of this script forever?
    The hook — and you knew there had to be one — is that Matt and Ben are played by women (playwrights Brenda Withers and Mindy Kaling). File under "S" for superfluous post-modern headfuck, right? Not really. The women play the roles affectionately, keeping the play safely out of rant range. Aside from a trip back in time, the play is confined to one Saturday afternoon in Affleck's apartment, after School Ties but before the Oscar-winning Good Will Hunting script was "written." There, the duo's past, present and conjoined futures are played out before us. We learn that Matt is intense, talented and kind of creepy. Ben is revealed to be obnoxious, popular and possibly the victim of a devastating head wound. Gwyneth Paltrow and J.D. Salinger appear to offer guidance. We learn that Ben upstaged Matt during a high-school-talent-show performance of "Bridge Over Troubled Water." Ben declares his desire to meet Daisy Fuentes — you see, he really likes Latin women.
    This tendency to play it safe-and-pleasant results in a performance that's conspicuously lacking in sexual charge you might expect. Matt and Ben's Ben and Matt live in a suspended, sanitized adolescence, one that involves a lot of cute practical jokes, pizza and a counterproductive admiration for Catcher in the Rye. (When we first encounter them, they're trying to adapt Catcher for the screen. It later turns out that Salinger has already sold the rights to "a charming Chinaman," action director John Woo.)