NEW YORK – Moose and I went to see Joy Behar’s new play “My First Ex-Husband” in off-Broadway’s new little MMAC Theater mainly to see Susan Lucci. She was performing on stage as a member of a quartet of superb actresses in a darkly comic exploration of the painful failed marriages of eight women, each a vividly drawn character.
Ms. Behar’s professional calling is stand-up comedy, a popular art form she has been practicing with huge success for decades. Here she strives for more, culling her material from several years’ worth of interviews with real women – many of whom, we imagine, were and likely still are faithful viewers of Ms. Behar’s daily ABC television talk show, “The View,”. The one-liners punctuate each tale with plenty of laughs, but the pain behind them is real and often poignant.
So far, Ms. Behar’s 90-minute collection of stories, directed by Randal Myler, has been performed by three casts, the first led by Ms. Behar herself. We were present for the second ensemble: Judy Gold, Tonya Pinkins, Cathy Moriarity, and our Susan.
You all don’t need to be reminded that Susan is, of course, one of our great soap opera superstars, having played the now iconic fashion model Erica Kane in the sadly missed “All My Children’ for over 40 years. I covered her the whole time, chronicling her poignant portrayal of her glamorous character’s search for happiness through multiple marriages. I always marveled at her natural effervescence. When she entered the room, everything stopped. Yet she was never showy in a calculated way.
In 1999, she finally won a Daytime Emmy as best actress after 19 nominations. This honor was turned into a standing joke by talk show hosts and comedians, and it became all many viewers knew about Susan. We, you and I, knew better, of course.
Moose, a theater reporter and reviewer all those years, didn’t know much more about Susan. With the help of YouTube and old video cassettes, he’s seen her at her television best. Unlike me, he missed her Broadway turn in “Annie Get Your Gun,” replacing Bernadette Peters. So this was his first time seeing her live on stage.
After her opening monologue, he turned to me, wide eyed, and whispered, “Holy cow!”
Here’s what we were watching:
In Ms. Behar’s play, reader’s theater and stand-up comedy intersect and travel comfortably together for one engaging act. There are four lecterns, no sets, no music. The four actresses sit on four chairs waiting their turns. Each is equipped with a drinking mug, as if they had all gathered for a coffee klatch. Each has two monologues that tell the stories of the horror show unions of eight women who eventually escaped marriages that, to put it mildly, simply weren’t for them – and probably wouldn’t be for any woman, based on their descriptions.
The offending husbands they speak of are pushy, demanding, insensitive, completely self-absorbed and, in some cases, very weird. As in any relationship, their true personalities became clear only over time. One turned out to be a cross-dresser. Another was obsessed with non-stop, around the clock sex. Another revealed an X-rated affair complete with a porno collection. Another was a strict adherent to strict Orthodox Jewish marriage roles in a stifling arranged marriage forced on the bride when she was only 17. All of Ms. Behar’s women felt trapped. All escaped sooner or later, with later lasting for years – rather like an ongoing story in a soap opera.
In this cast, Susan replaced Ms. Behar with the opening and closing monologues. In the opening, titled “Walla Walla Bang Bang,” she brought to life a woman whose husband proved to be a survivalist nut, forcing her to endure primitive camping adventures in a genuine wilderness. And talk about cheap! “He used pie plates for hubcaps,” she says. Susan closed the show with “Get Off of Me!” told by the woman with the horn dog husband.
Each cast member is furnished with a printed text, but, as Susan told Rosanna Scotto on “Good Day, New York,” it was used just for reference. It is necessary to know the material intimately, she explained, to inhabit the character, to communicate the depth of feeling contained in each revelation. Susan should know – she’s been doing this for years, on soap opera, where the stories never really end.
The third cast of “My First Ex-Husband,” consisting of Veanne Cox, Gina Gershon, Jackie Hoffman and Andrea Navedo, continues through April 20.
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