For better or for worse, but mostly for worse, Joy Behar’s new show My First Ex-Husband explores the lighter side of divorce — a fireworks-filled Independence Day for women who’ve been wronged by the men in their lives. And how they’ve been wronged.

The View co-host takes turns at the lectern of the 200-seat black-box space called MMAC Theater (located beneath an Upper West Side ballet school a few blocks west of Lincoln Center) with Susie Essman, Tovah Feldshuh, and Adrienne C. Moore — each delivering a minimally acted account of a woman about the no-good man she finally managed to escape after years of duress. These are mostly New York stories for women of a certain age: an Orthodox Jew who belatedly flees her arranged marriage and the restrictions of that strict religious community; the wife of a Mob-connected bookie who vacations at the Mount Airy Lodge or Catskills resorts like Villa Roma; an urbanite who returns to Brooklyn after her man drags her to an upstate farmhouse to pursue “the lifestyle of the Amish”; a therapist’s wife who internalizes every slight criticism just as she did with her mother’s daily sniping.

Each yarn is scattered with jokey asides (“He was so cheap, he used Entenmann’s pie plates for hub caps”), the kind that draw knowing chuckles from an audience that skews older and more female than usual. There are some frankish discussions of sex — and how the drive to have it can vary (or not vary) the longer you’re with someone. There aren’t any real O. Henry-style narrative surprises here. Once a performer introduces her character and the broad outlines of her situation — like a woman who discovers her husband is into cross-dressing — you can safely predict how the situation will resolve itself, right down to the buttoned-up kicker (“I guess it’s sad that I lost a husband. But the good news is that I gained a girlfriend”).

The initial cast of performers, all sleekly dressed in black, acquit themselves just fine, though many were still flipping through the pages of the binder while occasionally injecting vocal flourishes for emphasis or character development. My Ex-Husband is the sort of show for women who’d just as soon dress up for a night out and skip the theater, instead plopping themselves in a noisy cafe to eavesdrop on the juicy stories of nearby patrons spilling all the dirt about their lives. If you have an appetite for tea, this brew may be just strong enough to sustain you for 90 minutes. Randal Myler directs. ★★☆☆☆

MY FIRST EX-HUSBAND
MMAC Theater, Off Broadway
Running time: 90 minutes (no intermission)
Tickets on sale through April 20 (top price: $186)