Joy Behar taking 'Me, My Mouth & I' solo stand-up to East Hampton

There's an implied "big" in the title of "Me, My Mouth & I," Joy Behar's 2014 Off-Broadway monologue she's bringing to the John Drew Theater for two weekend performances.

"A lot of my success and many of my failures are about my big mouth," Behar said by phone from her residence in East Hampton, where she and her daughter, Eve, and grandson, Luca, are spending time together. "It's my Bridgadoon," she says of her Hamptons summer.

Her mouth, Behar says, is part of the reason she left "The View" after 16 years as a co-host on Barbara Walter's late-morning ABC chat-fest. It's also part of the reason she may return soon. (Behar said she can't confirm anything yet regarding "The View," but added, "They came to me.")

VIEWPOINT

Fans of "The View" -- and of Behar, who left the show in 2013 -- will find a lot to relate to in "Me, My Mouth & I," says the star and author of the one-woman show. "Hopefully, there are a lot of laughs in my story about a woman who changed her entire life at 40," Behar, 72, says.

There's also a lot for Long Islanders to relate to. A slideshow photo album from her Williamsburg childhood aside -- she was born Josephine Victoria Occhiuto -- Behar's story begins with her life as a young wife, mother and teacher on Long Island. She makes frequent references to LIE exit 60. That's the exit she and her first husband, Joe, a professor, took on their way home to Centereach. "My husband was studying for his PhD at Stony Brook [University], where I was getting my masters in education." Behar taught English at Lindenhurst High School for one year. "I got pregnant and left," she says, though she later did some substitute teaching in the Babylon school district. By her early 40s, Behar was getting restless. Her show business start, if you can call it that, was in 1975 ABC's "Good Morning America" -- as a secretary answering the phones. Then she tried stand-up at comedy clubs in Manhattan.

COMEDY LESSONS

"There's nothing harder than stand-up," Behar says. "In the classroom, you have a captive audience. In stand-up, they can stand up and walk out."

Of her outspoken liberal views, Behar says it cost "The View" a guest appearance by Sarah Palin, among others. "She told Barbara I was too hard on her," Behar says of Palin, the 2008 Republican vice presidential nominee.

When asked about rumors of future guests or co-hosts of "The View," she says of Caitlyn Jenner, "I wonder if she'll be OK with being paid less as a woman than she was as a man." Regarding Monica Lewinsky, "After you talk about Bill Clinton, you wonder what else she has to say. Besides, if she was co-host, we'd never get Hillary on the show."

"But," she adds with a laugh, "maybe that's just me and my big mouth."

WHAT "Me, My Mouth & I"

WHEN | WHERE 8 p.m. Saturday and Sunday, Guild Hall's John Drew Theater, 158 Main St., East Hampton

TICKETS $50-$150; 631-324-4050, guildhall.org