Review: “AVA: The Secret Conversations” at Studebaker Theater

At a time when superheroes and sci-fi franchises dominate movie screens and streaming mini-series have grabbed many of the best actors and directors, it’s not surprising that many people are looking yearningly back at the Golden Age of Hollywood.

Among the stars of yesteryear getting renewed attention is Ava Gardner. She lit up marquees in the 1950s and early ‘60s, earning an Academy Award nomination for her role in “Mogambo” (1953), a romantic drama set in Africa, and landed 25th on the American Film Institute’s 1999 ranking of the greatest female screen legends.

A touring production of a lightweight new play, “AVA: The Secret Conversations,” running through Oct. 12 at the Studebaker Theater, tries to bring the Tinsel Town siren back into focus but winds up selling her and its audiences a little short.

The play, which lands in Chicago after runs in Los Angeles and New York, is based on a 2013 book that was originally intended as Gardner’s autobiography. But Gardner fired her ghostwriter, the British journalist Peter Evans. Still, he managed to secure the rights to publish their 1988-90 conversations with supplemental material from other sources.

Elizabeth McGovern, who is best-known for her long-running role as the affable wife and mother in the British period drama “Downton Abbey,” adapted the play from that book and takes on the title role. In some ways, the Evanston native seems like an unlikely candidate to play a femme fatale. But perhaps that was the point, opposites attract.

In any case, there is plenty of precedent for a presentation in which a famous woman gets to the end of her life and reminisces. See “Master Class,” the 1995 play by Terrence McNally, about the celebrated soprano Maria Callas, or Lanie Robertson’s “Woman Before a Glass,” about the life of arts philanthropist Peggy Guggenheim.

What sets “AVA” apart is that it is not actually a play about Gardner. In something of a surprise, the script actually revolves around Evans, portrayed by Aaron Costa Ganis, who also wrote biographies of Aristotle Onassis and Peter Sellers. The story, told from his perspective, is set in Gardner’s nicely appointed, French-influenced London apartment and unfolds via alternately frank, confrontational and circuitous conversations between Evans and the actress. The climax is their ultimate falling out.

In the play, Gardner complains that all Evans seeks are details about her liaisons with her three celebrity husbands – Mickey Rooney, Artie Show and Frank Sinatra. Yet even she knows that the book requires salacious details of those relationships to ever be published and sold.

Naturally, the play focuses on those men as well. The problem is that we gain no real insight into Gardner, including shockingly little about her as an artist. She just comes across as shallow, unhappy and even bitter, and the frequent F-bombs and other profanity cheapen things even more. There is no redemptive moment, like the final monologue in “Master Class” in which Callas discusses the sacrifices she made to further her artistry.

That said, a couple of nifty theatrical devices give this production a historical and visual boost. The audience benefits from well-edited sets of projections of real-life newspaper clips, while black-and-white photographs and period music introduce the three husbands to those who might know little about them. In addition, Evans has an on-going dialogue with his agent (Michael Bakkensen), who is only heard as an amplified off-stage voice, an approach that gives the writer an outside sounding board without intruding on the central pair.

In many ways, the real star of the show is Ganis, who, as Evans, ably conveys the wannabe ghostwriter’s conflicting emotions. He’s eager to capitalize on the gossipy episodes of Gardner’s life,yet the pair appear to form a genuine bond. At the same time, he compellingly takes on the personas of Rooney, Shaw and Sinatra with slight variations in accent, as he and Gardner go back in time on their memory tour.

It is a pleasure to see McGovern back on the stage, a place she has performed at multiple times in her career. But her performance, while bright and energetic, comes across as too thin and superficial. In part, she is let down by her own material. She also seems unwilling to get beyond Gardner’s alcohol and profanity and really try to humanize and understand this larger-than-life personality.

In the end, what we get with “AVA” is kind of bio-lite – a 90-minute play that breezes along, provides a few laughs and is entertaining as far as it goes. But it is hard not to want more.