Kaling and Withers flip a script. photo: Will Beckton Matt and Ben By Mindy Kaling and Brenda Withers P.S.122, 150 First Avenue 212.477.5288 more theater most popular most commented The Unconquered by Alexis Soloski Rafta, Rafta . . . by Alexis Soloski Rattlestick Playwrights Theater by Michael Feingold Unsettled Sightlines by Michelle Orange John Turturro's Does Beckett Hamm I Am by Alexis Soloski Girls Love Gay Male Porn Pucker Up by Tristan Taormino My Boyfriend's Kink Is Getting Fat. What Do I Do? Savage Love by Dan Savage Sex and the City Spoilers: A Sneak Preview of What Really Happens to Carrie and the Girls by Lynn Yaeger The Barely Legal Empire of Tony Alamo by Maria Luisa Tucker Our Favorite Writers Pick Their Favorite Obscure Books Summer Guide by ALEXANDER NAZARYAN NYPD Inaction Over a Missing Black Woman Found Dead Sparks a Historic Racial-Bias Lawsuit (9) Sean Gardiner Devo-Inspired Art in East Williamsburg (8) Maro The Barely Legal Empire of Tony Alamo (5) Maria Luisa Tucker David Mamet: Why I Am No Longer a 'Brain-Dead Liberal' (4) David Mamet Runnin' Scared: Deep South of Houston: Is a Soul-Food Restaurant Too Black for Soho? (4) Runnin' Scared: Chloe A. Hilliard

Since its 2002 debut, the real Affleck has done Daredevil and two flicks with J.Lo. Damon has detoured from superhero-dom, jumping from The Bourne Identity to Gerry, a Godot-ish Gus Van Sant desert ramble. While Matt-Ben divergence might seem threatening to the relevance of this spoof, it's actually made its personality theories all the more intriguing.

With David Warren's direction tightening the comic timing, Withers's portrait of Damon as fussy careerist hits hard from go. Oxford-clad Matt sternly teaches sweatsuited Ben his art ("Put your eyes on my eyes! Your eyes—my eyes!") But Kaling's Ben is a golden-flow stitch. A flashback to a school talent show reveals Matt strumming Simon and Garfunkel as Ben throws gang signs, freestyles, and pronounces the whole thing "gay and retarded." Matt and Ben's lampoons, however harsh, are affectionate, and one imagines this script falling into Kaling and Withers's laps just as Hunting coyly availed itself to its Matt and Ben's pre-Greenlight auteurs. And the creative struggles, excepting maybe that knuckle sandwich, have an energy that only comes from experience.