Review: Joy Behar’s My First Ex-Husband Is Divorced-Queen Story Hour

I got the sense that matinee performances are the best way to experience Joy Behar’s new series of comedy monologues, My First Ex-Husband, now at MMAC Theater. Revved up on brunch mimosas, the crowd of mostly older women at the performance I attended seemed eager to sample from the pu pu platter of awful male behavior served at this show, with some even shouting back to the stage as one might at a charismatic church. This is the congregation of the most righteous divorcées, and their energy is contagious.

Theatergoers who have seen The Vagina Monologues or Love, Loss, and What I Wore will be familiar with the format. Four women appear onstage and read the stories from a lectern (this month it’s Susie Essman, Tovah Feldshuh, Adrienne C. Moore, and Behar herself, but future casts will include Susan Lucci, Gina Gershon, and Jackie Hoffman). Behar wrote them all, allegedly based on real people with names changed to “protect the guilty.” They range from mildly funny to slightly undercooked, the outer limits of both tragedy and comedy left unexplored—which is perhaps best when one is trying to digest one’s benedict.

There’s Brooklyn native Jessica (Essman), who quickly tired of her cheap outdoorsy husband and took a transcontinental flight to Oregon during Thanksgiving to knock boots with a man she describes as “half Irish and half Walla Walla tribesman.” Actor Laila (Moore) tells us about her husband’s midlife sexual frenzy and the very awkward phone call she had with the other woman, who made sure to let her know that she is a fan. The play never questions the assumption that male infidelity is inexcusable but female infidelity is usually justified, denying the audience the opportunity to interrogate the value of monogamy in long-term relationships but leaving viewers, whether cheater or cheated, soaking in a warm bath of sisterly affirmation.

As is usually the case with shows like this, the drama tightens and slackens with the performance. Feldshuh delivers the highlight in a monologue titled “Wigged Out.” She plays Rebecca, an ultra-Orthodox Jewish woman whose only experience of sex is as a painful obligation that is surveilled by seemingly everyone in her community. “It doesn’t help that I somehow ended up married to a man who was considered the most well-endowed man in his Yeshiva! Oy gevalt,” she tells us, pulling at the sides of her dress in anxiety, making us feel the itch of her hated sheitel. By making these lines seem authentic and conversational, Feldshuh proves why she is one of the greatest solo performers to ever appear on Broadway.

But that theatrical spell can only be cast by the performer. Director Randal Myler has opted for conference panel staging, with the actors seated in a row of Pottery Barn chairs flanked by incandescent floor lamps (Design Contact is credited as the “theatrical design consultant”). Each grasps a mug to complete the coffee klatch aesthetic, rising to the lectern to deliver two stories each. It’s like The View, but without the table or spicy dialogue. Projection designer Christopher Ash preps the audience with stock wedding photos in the pre-show, but opts to just project the title of each section during the show, lest he pull a Eureka Day on the proceedings.

While not a groundbreaking work of theater, My First Ex-Husband is sure to provoke more stories on the drive home as theatergoers reminisce about their own starter marriages. In that light, the show can be seen as a 90-minute icebreaker to a lifetime of self-examination. And that’s fine, because the only person you can honestly promise “till death do us part” is yourself.