Ava Gardner’s Star Shines again at Studebaker

They don’t make Hollywood stars like they used to,and based on Elizabeth McGovern’s play Ava:The Secret Conversations, based on the book “The Secret Conversations” its a damn shame.  McGovern herself plays the title role, bringing the brash no holds bar star back to life in her London apartment on the beautiful Studebaker stage. 

In this story Gardner needs money following a stroke which has aged her and made performing difficult.  She meets with Peter Evans, a British Daily Express writer who specializes in celebrity biographies, to ghost write her autobiography. They are a contentious pair, and break off talking just before she dies in 1990–in real life the book is published in 2013 after his death.  The conversations include Gardner's take on her three marriages: to Mickey Rooney, Artie Shaw and Frank Sinatra, her relationship to Howard Hughes, as well as her beginnings in the South and as a young contract starlet.

The play allows McGovern, an accomplished film star in her own right,  to embody one of the golden age of Hollywood’s greatest female stars as Gardner navigates the industry and tries to maintain her autonomy when the system wants to box her in, and gives her expletive filled perspective on her romantic life with husbands whose plans for her may not be her own wishes.   McGovern has created a meaningful portrait of a personality chafing at the walls that being a star builds around a woman, and in doing so creates a signature role for herself.  Nowadays if a woman over 50 wants a juicy part to play she is going to have to produce it, and possibly write it.  Mainstream media is slowly changing, but up until very recently older women were accessory roles, not central characters, and certainly not full fleshed complex and sympathetic roles like this onr.  McGovern delicately portrays the disability of stroke and aging and lets rip the frustration and rage at growing old in an industry that does not allow for imperfection. The play is at once a nostalgic look at a bygone era and a fresh take on how far women have come.  

McGovern the playwright has also created a fantastic role for Aaron Costa Ganis who plays Peter Evans: he must become Mickey, Howard, Artie and Frank in flashbacks! 

You haven’t got much time to catch this tribute and comment on important women in cinema: Ava: The Secret Conversations is playing Tuesday through Sunday October 12,2025 at the Fine Arts Building Studebaker Theatre, 410 South Michigan Avenue in Chicago. For tickets go to https://www.fineartsbuilding.com/events/ava-the-secret-conversations/

No part of this review was created using AI

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