Theatre 2025: Ava - Secret Conversations

Ava Gardner (1922-1990) was a famous American actress working under contract for MGM between 1941-1986, which overlapped Hollywood’s Golden Age.  Known for her stunning looks and famous husbands as much as for her movie roles including “The Killers”, “Show Boat”, “The Barefoot Contessa”, “Night of the Iguana” and “Mogambo”, Gardner was dubbed “The World’s Most Beautiful Animal”.  She was briefly married to Mickey Rooney (1942-43), Artie Shaw (1945-46), and Frank Sinatra (1951-57).  All this can be discovered from a basic Google or Wikipedia search.

It was a bit of a disappointment to watch the play “Ava: Secret Conversations” which was based on a collaborative autobiography of Gardner that was ghost-written by Peter Evans.  Despite the implicit promises of the title, there were not really any new insights about the star.  Rather, the play focuses on the period in 1988, towards the end of Ava’s life, when Evans and Gardner held multiple private interviews in preparation for the book, only to have it all fall apart at the end. Gardner walked away from the project out of loyalty to Sinatra after learning that Evans had been successfully sued for libel by Ava's last husband, who she considered the love of her life despite their divorce.  Instead, Gardner worked with other writers on “Ava: My Story” which was published a few months after her death in 1990.  Peter Evans’ book was not published until 2013, a year after his death, after Gardner’s estate finally granted permission.

The role of Ava is played by Elizabeth McGovern of Downton Abbey fame, who also wrote the screenplay adapted from Evan’s book.  If McGovern’s portrayal is accurate, in the last years of Ava’s life, she was skittish, acerbic, foul-mouthed, temperamental and elusive in revealing much detail about her personal life.  The sole humorous moment in the play was when Ava protested about all the swearing that Evans had included in the biography but did so by cursing like a sailor. On the whole, I thought her performance felt overwrought and whether that was because of the acting or what was required by the screenplay, both can be attributed back to McGovern.

Aaron Costa Ganis, in the role of Peter Evans, fares much better.  He also portrays all three of Ava’s husbands, aptly mimicking each of them while video cues in the background help to clarify which character he is playing.  In particular, in the role of Sinatra, Costa Ganis does such a great job of singing “I’ve Got You Under My Skin” that I watched closely to determine whether he was lip-syncing (he wasn’t). Towards the end of the show as the relationship between Evans and Gardner was fraying, there was implication that Evans had fallen for Gardner, which does not seem to be substantiated by history and could have been added just for dramatic purposes.

In the end, I found this play to be lightweight and not that memorable. For me, the two most intriguing questions that arose from attending this show were not even about the content of the play.  The first was why no photographs were allowed, even at curtain call.  Most shows encourage you to take photos at curtain call and post them as part of free publicity, which you would think this show could use.   The second was why Elizabeth McGovern looked so shockingly thin? Perhaps she always looks like this but you couldn’t tell from watching Downton Abbey since she wore long sleeves and flowing outfits and we never saw her bare limbs.

Theatre 2025: CHILD-ish @ Tarragon Theatre

My husband Rich and I watch so many shows in a year just based on our 3 subscriptions to Main Mirvish, Off Mirvish and Crow’s Theatre alone that I am reluctant to add many more to our plate.  This is especially true since I want to write about the shows that I watch and am overwhelmed when they come too frequently.  Rich, on the other hand, is tempted by every good review that he reads in the paper.  This is how we ended up buying last minute tickets to CHILD-ish at Tarragon Theatre.

CHILD-ish is a “verbatim play” meaning that the dialogue of the work is taken directly from words spoken by people in real-life interviews.  These words are reproduced by actors exactly as the original speaker said them, including any pauses, hesitation words, coughs or other verbal ticks.  We have watched other verbatim plays in the past, including the musical London Road where the lyrics of songs are taken from interviews of residents of Ipswich, UK as they discuss their fears about a serial killer preying on their town.  Taking the concept of a verbatim play to extremes is Dana H where the actress actually lip-syncs the words from an interview that was pre-recorded and is playing on the sound system.

In CHILD-ish, playwright/interviewer Sunny Drake spent multiple years interviewing over 40 children from ages 5-12 on a variety of topics, then selected and edited together interesting and poignant moments to form a play.  The set resembles an office break-out room with a wide screen on the back wall, two round plush stools, and a segmented couch that is pulled apart and reconfigured into separate formations throughout the play.  An actor portrays Sunny conducting the interviews but the spin or conceit of the show is that four adults portray an amalgamation of the various children, providing their responses and reactions verbatim and as delivered by the children.  Yet these actors are dressed like adults in office attire (one is even in a suit and tie) and try hard not to “act like children” as they literally speak the words out of the mouths of babes. 

The interview starts comically as the interviewees get a feel for what their boundaries are, gently pushing the limits to see what is allowed.  Can they say whatever they want and the adults will be forced to repeat what was said?  Can they cluck like chickens (as the four proceed to do so while strutting around)?  Can they swear?  One interviewee proceeds to sing a song about unicorns, claiming to be one as the others all mimic a unicorn’s horn with their finger.

They are first asked some soft questions covering topics including love, friendship, dating, and marriage (as seen through the eyes of 5 years olds!).  “What do you think love is?”, “How do you know if someone likes you?”, “How can you get someone to like you”.  The responses are genuine, spontaneous, refreshing, sometimes surprising, and occasionally quite funny, especially when coming from younger kids while being spoken by adult actors.  After the interviewer (Sunny) asked questions for a while, it was decided that some of the older children could interview him, and then each other.  Eventually more serious topics are broached including bullying, self-harm, depression, consent, racism, immigration, war, death, and the state of the world including climate change.  Hearing such brutally honest, intelligent and touching responses in this format makes one realize that more attention should be paid to what children say and feel.  We should not need to channel these thoughts through adults in order to give them the gravitas that they deserve.

From this perspective, the play worked for us and we found it both entertaining and enlightening. One segment where the kids complained about their parents being on their cell phone devices too much, not being present, and paying too little attention really struck home.  Another impactful interaction dealt with consent and seemed to come from the dialog of a fairly young girl who complained that she didn’t always want to be kissed by the little boy that she planned to marry, but didn’t feel like she could say no since she didn’t want to hurt his feelings.  It drove home how early this concept of consent becomes relevant and needs to be taught.

Where the play fell apart for us is during the second half of the 70-minute show when an attempt at audience participation felt forced and unnecessary.  The lights were turned on and the audience was directed to pair up and interview one another with a set of questions that were projected on a screen.  Full disclosure, but Rich and I really dislike shows that include audience participation and avoid going to them if at all possible.  We also make sure never to sit on the aisles or in the front rows for these types of shows so that we won’t be picked. While there regularly are trigger warnings about loud noises, smoke, coarse language, etc. in the description of a show, there is rarely, if ever, a warning about audience participation and there should be!  

Then a bunch of children appeared on stage and played a game where they used the couch sections and stools to create various animals out of them.  It was not clear what the point of this part was, other than to provide an example of what it was like interviewing and interacting with the actual children.  Finally, the play ended with the audience being prompted to stand and repeat the “children’s manifesto” which was highlighted on the screen, including “Listen to Kids!!!” and “Play, Play, Play”.  None of these last scenes resonated with us and ended up detracting from what was initially an interesting and promising premise.  We would have preferred that the show just stuck to the interview format and provide more examples of what was said by the kids since we found that part to be fascinating.

At the post show talkback, one of the actresses talked about the actors needing to keep on an “adult mask” when saying their lines in order to treat the words seriously and with respect, which worked fairly well until they had to cluck like chickens and act like unicorns.  She also quoted a newspaper review that said it was too bad it takes hearing the valid thoughts of children coming out of the mouths of adults for them to be taken seriously.  One fun moment came when a question from the audience ended up being from the father of the actor playing Sunny.  She prefaced her response with “Hi Dad! That’s my father!”  If he had been used as a plant used to get the questions rolling, it worked!