But this is still a thoughtful and classy show, which shows a woman who remained resolutely herself (but always kept something back) as the men in her life looked for themselves – and lost themselves – in her dazzling glow.
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Following the current trend of stories about writers befriending celebrities Ava: The Secret Conversations, the play based on a book by the same name, focuses on the famous star Ava Gardner and her relationship with the author of her tell-all book.
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Elizabeth McGovern, Downton Abbey's chaste materfamilias, adapted [taped conversations] for this lightly comic two-hander, where she plays the effing diva with an insouciant elegance and sympathy, if more barefoot Countess than contessa.
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...a glossily presented Wikipedia entry complete with enough visual reminders of Gardner herself to indicate the shortfall in McGovern’s playwriting foray.
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The 90 minute affair ends with much-loved footage of the star dancing in The Barefoot Contessa (1954), seductive moves from yesteryear that McGovern poignantly mimics. A shame the rest of the evening plods.
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But a sense of real narrative progress needs to come from the story, not the scenery. Ultimately, it feels like a feeble, oddly bitter attempt to capture the lustre of a star who’s already fading from cultural memory.
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It’s certainly not helped by the fact that both the star and the story are suffocated by a convoluted and thoroughly distracting design concept...McGovern’s debut play may not be perfect, but its dramaturgical issues are only amplified by the staging.
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Will anyone other than over-60s and diehard Downton fans – a Venn diagram that’s almost a circle, surely – care for a lazy portrait of a woman who died 32 years ago, and whose heyday was in the 1950s?
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