Ava: The Secret Conversations tickets

See Oscar and Golden Globe nominee Elizabeth McGovern (Ragtime, The Handmaid's Tale, Ordinary People) star as Hollywood's original femme fatale, Ava Gardner. Ava: The Secret Conversations plays at New York City Center, Stave I, after an acclaimed West Coast bow. BroadwayWorld said, "Entrancing and hypnotic, McGovern embodies Ava Gardner in a gutsy exploration and she does so with fire."

Experience Ava: The Secret Conversations off Broadway and get a peek behind the silver screen: in this sharp new play, McGovern plays Gardner, who is sharing details of her storied career and tabloid divorces with real-life writer Peter Evans (played by Aaron Costa Ganis). Discussing her marriages to Mickey Rooney, Artie Shaw, and Frank Sinatra, and her turbulent relationship to Howard Hughes, Gardner reveals the person behind the icon without sacrificing scintillating details.

After that interview, Evans’s stories depicting a bygone era were finally published, twenty-five years later, and only with permission from Gardener’s estate. Now, those legendary stories are reimagined for the stage in a dynamic production that is "mesmerizing — two electric actors, McGovern and Ganis, are powerful forces," Entertainment Weekly wrote, calling the show "more interesting than an Oscar-winning biopic."

With plenty of raves — The Los Angeles Times said, "McGovern casts a spell as a classic Hollywood femme fatale" — this is a not-to-be-missed show directed by Tony Award nominee Moritz von Stuelpnagel and adapted by McGovern herself. The stage adaptation is based on the book The Secret Conversations by Peter Evans and Ava Gardner, and now it lives on stage for the first time in the Big Apple, where so many of the starlet's life stories took place.