As snappy, smart and entertaining as much of Imaginary Friends is, Nora Ephron's ficto-biography of feuding literary lionesses Lillian Hellman and Mary McCarthy can't overcome a basic stasis in its premise: both writers are dead from the outset and quarreling in retrospect. Director Jack O'Brien can trick this up with video and vaudeville turns (with generally ephemeral, period-style songs by Craig Carnelia and Marvin Hamlisch), but that just makes the piece feel like a Dirty Blonde wannabe.
For all the fun of watching bitchiness played to the hilt by the fine Swoosie Kurtz and the ever-wondrous Cherry Jones, the play sags in its second-act trial scene - just where it should strike tinder. Having the characters freely admit that they're giving us an anti-climax doesn't undo that basic problem, nor does it help when McCarthy and Hellman spend the last ten minutes of this lengthy evening wandering around the stage seeking an ending.
