It’s easy to see why Elizabeth McGovern might have been drawn to the story of Ava Gardner, another American actress who found Hollywood fame in her 20s and 30s and then moved to London as the ingenue and leading-lady roles stopped coming. Now McGovern, who unlike Gardner managed to reawaken her career playing an expat American turned countess in the hit TV series Downton Abbey, is delving into Gardner’s personal legacy with a two-handed drama, Ava: The Secret Conversations, that she both wrote and stars in as the Golden Age legend.
McGovern bypassed Gardner’s official self-titled biography, which was published just after the star’s 1990 death at age 67, and instead worked from a curious book titled Ava: The Secret Conversations, a glorified transcription of interviews that British journalist Peter Evans conducted with Gardner that were intended to result in that memoir — until she abruptly fired him after learning that he had been sued successfully for libel by her ex-husband Frank Sinatra (she hired other ghost writers for her book). Evans’ book was published in 2013, after his own death, with the blessing of Gardner’s estate and the star listed as co-author.
McGovern, who remains more of a grown-up girl next door than the sultry starlet that Gardner embodied, makes a striking impression as the Hollywood icon. She introduces us to Gardner as a sharp-tongued, cocktail-gulping, chain-smoking elder working on a memoir because mostly because she needs the cash (and acting roles presumably have dried up, especially after a recent stroke). “I either write the book or sell the jewels,” she tells Evans (Aaron Costa Ganis) early on, “and I’m kinda sentimental about the jewels.” McGovern doesn’t really look like Gardner; she more closely resembles a late-in-life Judy Garland. But McGovern convincingly renders Gardner’s accent, a blend of her native North Carolina roots and the clipped tones of mid-century Hollywood stars. And she captures the air of dissolution that comes with a celebrity whose star has dimmed, an impression that’s enhanced by a series of outfits of varying degrees of glamour (designed by Toni-Leslie James).
Ganis’ Evans provides the narrative framework for the story: He’s the fourth-wall-breaking would-be novelist who reluctantly takes on Gardner’s ghost-writing assignment and then finds himself caught up in his subject’s spell. The Brooklyn-born actor also plays the major loves of Gardner’s life as the onstage interview sessions morph into staged memories. Director Moritz von Stuelpnagel underscores the change with abrupt shifts in Amith Chandrashaker’s lighting and Alex Basco Koch’s projections on David Meyer’s set, a re-creation of Gardner’s well-appointed London flat.
In these flashback scenes, McGovern transforms herself from the naive newcomer swept up by first husband Mickey Rooney to the seen-most-of-it-all veteran who stands her ground with volatile third husband Sinatra. Along the way, Ganis drops his passable British accent as Evans to take on Rooney’s rat-a-tat energy, then effects a standoffish snobbishness as band leader and second hubby Artie Shaw, and finally embraces Sinatra’s temperamental wise-guy persona, even taking a lowered mic to croon “I’ve Got You Under My Skin.” It’s an impressive, if not always seamless performance.
It’s hard to fault Ava: The Secret Conversations as an actor’s showcase, but it falters as a wholly satisfying drama. Old Hollywood stars in their twilight years? We’ve seen this story before, including the awkward, unconvincing flirtations between Gardner and Evans that anticipate their inevitable falling out. (That Sinatra-driven plot development also seems to come out of nowhere — did she really not vet this writer before hiring him?) McGovern, as both actress and writer, intuits exactly what an audience wants from a 21st-century homage to Ava Gardner: a little Hollywood gossip (more lukewarm than hot after all these years) and some old-fashioned showwomanship. ★★★☆☆
AVA: THE SECRET CONVERSATIONS
New York City Center, Off Broadway
Running time: 90 minutes (no intermission)
Tickets on sale through Sept. 14 for $63 to $219
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