AVA: THE SECRET CONVERSATIONS Extends at Mirvish

Due to popular demand, an additional week of performances has been added for the Canadian premiere of Ava: The Secret Conversations, written by and starring Elizabeth McGovern as Hollywood’s original femme fatale Ava Gardner.  

This critically acclaimed new play is making a three-city tour. It played in New York in July and Sept, and is now in Chicago, before coming to Toronto, November 6 to 30, at the CAA Theatre. 

The production is directed by Tony Award nominee Moritz von Stuelpnagel (Broadway: Hand to God, Present Laughter) and produced by Karl Sydow (Los Angeles: The Last Ship, UK: Noises Off, The Light in the Piazza).

In 1988, the Golden Age of Cinema’s Ava Gardner sat for a series of interviews with journalist Peter Evans that were to become the basis of an autobiography. There was lots of material to cover – her marriages to Mickey Rooney, Artie Shaw, and Frank Sinatra, her turbulent time with Howard Hughes, and the more than 50 films she made. Gardner’s relationship with Evans was tempestuous, and Gardner decided to write her memoir alone. Evans kept his notes and transcripts of those interviews and 25 years later, with permission from Gardner’s estate, he published the interviews and told the story of his time with Gardner. The book received rave reviews – Maureen Dowd in The New York Times called it “mesmerizing.”