AVA: The Secret Conversations at Riverside Studios

Based on the book “The Secret Conversations” by Peter Evans and Ava Gardner.
A fading star of Hollywood’s golden age, now living a quiet life in 1980s London, hires a journalist to write her biography in order to bring in much-needed income. The journalist can’t believe his luck. From poor Southern farm girl to a powerful Hollywood goddess her story is pure celluloid. A devastating beauty whose hard-drinking, hard loving lifestyle kept the gossip columnists busy as her movies thrilled the punters. The ultimate femme fatale – Ava Gardner

Not always intentionally, Ava spills the beans on her three husbands to often humorous effect: Mickey Rooney, a serial cheater so notorious that even his mother warned Gardner about him; bandleader Artie Shaw “a dominating son of a bitch – always putting me down” and Frank Sinatra.. “We were fighting all the time. Fighting and boozing. It was madness. But he was good in the feathers”. This compelling new play explores the fractured relationship between the public and private lives of one of Hollywood’s great icons.

Following the current trend of stories about writers befriending celebrities, most noticeable seen in the runaway success of the book The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo, Ava: The Secret Conversations, the play also based on a book by the same name, focus on the famous star Ava Gardner and her relationship with the author of her tell-all book. Did she tell the truth, or what he wanted to hear? Was the author controlling the narrative like the men throughout her career tried to, or was she the one controlling them all along…

The staging here is really inspired, with its clever mix of moving flats and projection making it look like you are watching a 1960s movie instead of theatre as you witness dynamic film cuts and screen wipes happening before your eyes. Sadly this appears to be the highlight of the production, as the writing fails to hold the attention that such an intriguing figure as Ava Garder should command. Feeding into our cultural obsession with celebrity this multilayered persona ends up feeling lost in the minutia as the short scenes fail to highlight the most interesting parts of Ava’s story. For much of the performance, the audience is left wondering what direction the show is taking.

There’s an interesting underlying story here; of the misogyny of the age, the power play between Ava and the men in her public, professional and personal life, the manipulation, that could make this show a real hit if it was just focused in the right way. In the end, it appears some interesting but not exciting performances by Elizabeth McGovern and Anatol Yusef and smart staging mask some fairly lacklustre writing as the performance leaves more questions than it answers.

Ava: The Secret Conversations is on until the 16th of April, tickets are £20 and can be booked through the Riverside Studios website.