Last Chance

Imaginary Friends -- There may be no business like show business, but neither is there any feud like a literary feud, and Nora Ephron, writing her first play, has convincingly made one into the other. “Imaginary Friends,� her dramatization of the parallel and conflicting lives of Lillian Hellman and Mary McCarthy, is a feast of wit and language drawn from the words of her famous protagonists but smartly shaped into a serious comedy with music (a handful of songs by Marvin Hamlisch and Craig Carnelia) that grows into a hair-pulling duel even Don King could appreciate. In this opening that is headed to Broadway in December, Swoosie Kurtz plays the contentious playwright-memoirist Hellman, and Cherry Jones is the formidable critic and novelist McCarthy. Ephron seizes upon McCarthy’s denouncing Hellman as a liar on “The Dick Cavett Show� in 1980 and works backward, filling in their stories from a vantage point beyond the grave.

-- Sean Mitchell

Ends Sunday at the Globe Theatres’ Old Globe Theatre, Balboa Park, San Diego. (619) 239-2255.