Ava – The Secret Conversations Written and Starring Elizabeth McGovern,
Stage 1, New York City Center,
By: Karen Isaacs - Aug 20, 2025
The relationship between the celebrity memoirist and his or her ghost writer is fraught with pitfalls. Often, the publisher is pushing the ghostwriter to focus on the scandalous or the personal, while the celebrity wants to focus on the work or the process.
Ava – The Secret Conversations about Ava Gardner, written and starring Elizabeth McGovern, is about just such a fraught relationship. It is based on the book Conversations with Ava, written by journalist Peter Evans, who was initially commissioned to write her work with her. Partway through, she fired him and wrote and used another ghostwriter to complete the book.
After her death, Evans wrote this book based on those conversations. (Gardner is credited as a co-author).
At times, this play seems more about Evans than it does about Ava. He is being pushed by his agent to focus on her marriages to Mickey Rooney, Artie Shaw, and, more importantly, Frank Sinatra, as well as on comments she may have made about their sexual prowess. He’s a reluctant participant, wanting to finish a novel which his agent seems never to remember he is writing.
Ava, on the other hand, is doing this strictly for the money she needs. It’s that or sell jewelry, to which, as she mentions, she has an emotional attachment.
Despite the fine performances by McGovern as Ava and Aaron Costa Ganis as the writer, it is basically unsatisfactory. It never succeeds in exploring the complicated relationship between writer and subject. By the end of the 90-minute play, we leave wanting to know much more about Ava, and a lot less about Evans.
To make it more than just a question and answer or question and rambling answer, at times, Evans becomes other characters. This added a level of confusion. It was clear when he was Mickey Rooney, Ava’s first husband, whom she met as a teenager when she first arrived in Hollywood, because of Rooney‘s recognizable personality and mannerisms. But when he became Artie Shaw, her second husband (the marriage was brief), it was more challenging to recognize. Shaw may be known for his music and his multiple wives, but how many people would recognize his ways of communication styles and topics?
Fortunately, Evans does not try to be Sinatra.
We learn very little about Ava. We recognize that she is adamant that her upbringing in North Carolina was both happy and that the family was not “dirt poor.” Both of these facts are questionable. We know she had a stroke; in fact, she wants to begin the book with graphic descriptions of her physical challenges. She swears like a longshoreman; she objects when she reads the first chapter and notices that. She is afraid of being viewed as a slut, though she talks about her enjoyment of sex.
But she says little – and Evans doesn’t ask – about her iconic roles in Mogambo, The Barefoot Contessa, On the Beach, and The Night of the Iguana, nor her costars in these, including Clark Gable, Grace Kelly, Humphrey Bogart, Gregory Peck, Fred Astaire, Deborah Kerr, and Richard Burton.
The most telling thing Ava says is that “they took away my voice” in reference to being dubbed in the film version of Show Boat. But in reality, her voice was taken from her throughout her career.
Certainly, the production qualities of this Manhattan Theatre Club production are fine. scenic designer David Meyer creates a luxurious London hotel suite; costume designer Toni-Leslie James provides period, casual glamorous attire for McGovern.
McGovern totally inhabits the outspoken, uninhibited Gardner, and Ganis is fine as a somewhat pretentious writer. Director Moritz von Stuelpnagel has the difficult task of balancing the spotlight between Ava and the much less interesting Evans. But it is the structure of the play that causes some of the confusion. I was left not sure if Ava and Evans had an affair or not.
The show runs through Sept. 14 at Stage 1, New York City Center, before moving on the Chicago and Toronto.