Elizabeth McGovern wrote and stars in Ava: The Secret Conversations, playing actress Ava Gardner.JESS LORCH
- Title: Ava: The Secret Conversations
- Written by: Elizabeth McGovern, based on the book The Secret Conversations by Peter Evans and Ava Gardner
- Directed by: Moritz von Stuelpnagel
- Performed by: Elizabeth McGovern, Aaron Costa Ganis, Michael Bakkensen
- Company: Karl Sydow, presented by Mirvish Productions
- Venue: CAA Theatre
- City: Toronto
- Year: Runs until Nov. 30
Take a scroll through the Gen Z side of #BookTok, and you’ll be inundated with suggestions to read Taylor Jenkins Reid’s bestselling novel The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo, in which an aging movie star grants a young journalist the chance to write her biography. It’s a seductive if somewhat predictable read; the titular bombshell is based in equal parts on Ava Gardner, Elizabeth Taylor and Marilyn Monroe, and yes, she’s had a lot of husbands.
But as The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo meanders toward its not-especially-shocking conclusion, something changes. The book is hardly about Hugo at all, not really. Hugo becomes a vessel through which Reid can explore what it means to be a writer – how it feels to distill supernova-sized personalities into prose.
Ava: The Secret Conversations, adapted from the tell-all book that actress Gardner co-wrote with journalist Peter Evans, flexes a familiar muscle in its examination of celebrity and legacy. Adapted for the stage by Downton Abbey alum Elizabeth McGovern – who also plays Gardner, to mixed success – the play wants you to to think, at least at first, that it’s about the starry woman who once wooed the likes of Frank Sinatra.
Aaron Costa Ganis, left, plays the journalist interviewing Gardner as well as her various husbands, including Frank Sinatra.Jeff Lorch/Supplied
But as Gardner and Evans (Aaron Costa Ganis, who also plays Gardner’s various husbands) begin to realize that their book is as much an excuse to see each other as it is a recollection of Gardner’s colourful inner life – the same thing happens here as in Evelyn Hugo. The story twists in on itself. By the end, the realization hits that the play is hardly about the real Gardner at all – it’s about the Gardner who blossomed in dialogue with Evans, and indeed, about Evans himself, as well as Gardner’s roster of romantic conquests.
The end result is a 90-minute evening of theatre that feels, well, a little pointless – we don’t learn all that much about the woman whose films are intermittently projected on the back wall of David Meyer’s attractive hotel room set, and we hardly even get to know Evans until the play’s nearly done. In director Moritz von Stuelpnagel’s production, McGovern’s script aches for an act break, for room to expand the various chapters of Gardner’s life (as well as Evans’s reaction to it).
As it stands, the text isn’t terrible, but it’s not great either – it’s a stack of shallow dives into the buzziest headlines of Gardner’s career and personal life.
As well, McGovern’s performance doesn’t always elevate the writing – she struggles with Gardner’s various accents, from the southern twang of the starlet’s youth to the more sophisticated, but, crucially, not overpowering, transatlantic lilt of her later years. It’s a shame the accents impose such a block between McGovern and Gardner – in fleeting moments, the former beautifully captures the latter’s warmth and charisma – but too often, the text is mealy in her mouth, an obstacle to overcome en route to the play’s denouement.
Jeff Lorch/Supplied
Ganis struggles with accents a touch, too – at Sunday’s opening matinee, it seemed he may have forgotten a switch or two between Evans’s British cadence and Sinatra’s iconic Italian-American drawl – but the script leaves him much more interesting material to tinker with. Evans wants to write a novel, not a hack biography; Sinatra wants to avoid the limelight, not bask in Gardner’s glow. Ganis’s stable of characters has to grapple with problems of varying stakes, but there’s a resonance between the men, a kinship that’s lovely to watch as it develops.
Indeed, theatre lovers across Toronto this year have had numerous chances to assess how different playwrights approach the relationship between a fictional journalist and their famous subject, from the flat-as-a-pancake interviewer in MJ to the much more deeply realized reporter in Nick Green’s Dinner with the Duchess.
In Ava: The Secret Conversations, McGovern wrestles with what it means to write someone’s story – to curate their life for an audience who will all but certainly pick up the eventual book in a pharmacy or airport – but never quite takes aim at the questionable journalistic ethics on display in Evans’s behaviour around Gardner. It’s an interesting premise, a working relationship between journalist and source turned semi-romantic – but it’s a pity the show’s not longer, given the ample opportunities for further depth and nuance in the storytelling.
For as long as there have been movie stars, there have been fans eager to learn about their innermost thoughts and dreams. By and large, Ava: The Secret Conversations caters to that culture of celebrity, and there are pretty moments in von Stuelpnagel’s production that go beyond plot – a game of chess between Evans and Gardner, plus gorgeous costumes by Toni-Leslie James.
But for the most part, Ava: The Secret Conversations is the glittery, underpowered flip through Gardner’s life that the actress feared her biography might be – more interested in the men at Gardner’s periphery than in the woman herself.