By Barbara & Scott Siegel…
Plays About Celebrities: Ava: The Secret Conversations and Gene & Gilda.
It’s a theatrical conundrum: shows about famous people are easier to sell to the public but also famously difficult to write well. The vast majority of these celebrity-driven vehicles fail right at the start with a lame framing device. You’ve seen it a thousand times: a character is at the end of his or her life and we relive that person’s life in a 90 minute flashback. Or worse, the celebrity is dead and is telling us his or her story from beyond the grave. Whatever the set-up, it’s always a heavy lift to actually get into the story — and the audience has to forgive and forget the embarrassing start and finish in order to hopefully enjoy the gossipy fun in the middle.
Often, the key to success of this kind of (semi) nonfiction theater is the choice of one’s subject. The more the audience knows about the celebrity, the less forgiving they will be about the show’s content. It’s hard to write a play about someone that the audience really knows well because they will be looking for the facts they already know. If the writer doesn’t supply those facts, or those famous anecdotes, the knowledgable audience member (or critic) will turn their collective noses up on the show. However, if the subject of the play, famous though they may be, is shrouded in mystery, then the revelations of the play — and usually the play, itself, will be admired for telling a fresh story.
Which brings us to these two current Off-Broadway plays, each of them finding their audiences largely on the strength of their celebrity subjects. One is about the love story (both funny and tragic) between famed comic movie star Gene Wilder and Saturday Night Live TV star Gilda Radner. Gene and Gilda is a play, written by Gary Gitter, that has the great advantage of a known dramatic arc — two famous comedians who marry later in life, only to have one of them, Gilda, dying of ovarian cancer not long after their marriage and Gene’s devotion to her throughout her illness.
As per usual, the framing device is torture. The play at 59E59 Theaters begins with Gene Wilder being interviewed by the voice of Dick Cavett. Clearly, Cavett was recorded recently as he sounds very old and tired, not to mention the recorded questions that are peppered throughout the play suffer from poor sound. At first the character of Gene (genially played by Jonathan Randell Silver) doesn’t want to talk about his late wife. But then Gilda appears (Out of memory? As a ghost — not very clear) and convinces Gene to tell all. Which, of course, he does.
After that, the interview moments make less and less sense insofar as storytelling logic is concerned, but we essentially forgive this as Gene, and a comically engaging Gilda (Jordan Kai Burnett) tell their love story. And what keeps the play afloat is the simple fact that much of what we learn about Gene and Gilda as people is not widespread public knowledge. We know where the play is going — that’s okay — but how it gets there is the real pleasure.
We’ll not rob the play of its revelations by spilling them here. Simply put, the show informs us about their lives with facts and stories we did not know, and it does so with considerable charm, thanks to the light and masterful touch of its director Joe Brancato.
All of that said, Gene & Gilda is a flawed celebrity showpiece, but it’s merits outshine its creaky structure.
Ava: The Secret Conversations is a celebrity showpiece with a whole set of different problems and virtues. The idea of telling the story of one of Hollywood’s great beauties, Ava Gardner, who also had a hugely high profile, scandalous public image, seems like a license to print money. Especially when the actress playing Ava Gardner is also a movie and TV star in her own right: Elizabeth McGovern. She is also the author of the play. That’s a powerful underpinning. Plus the production (at Stage 1 at New York’s City Center) is directed by the respected and successful Moritz Von Stuelpnagel.
The frame is somewhat original insofar as it tells us, with some amusing cheek, that the story is true, except for the parts that aren’t. And then we are introduced to a journalist Peter Evans (played to the hilt by Aaron Costa Ganis) who is hired to write Ava Gardner’s life story with Ava Gardner’s cooperation. And Gardner is played, not quite convincingly by Elizabeth McGovern (but, to be fair, who could stand the comparison to Ava Gardner?).
Again, like Gene and Gilda, the audience knows the broad outline of Gardner’s story: her marriages to Mickey Rooney, Artie Shaw, and Frank Sinatra, but very little is shared about those relationships. The play tries to get around those gossipy issues by making it clear that Peter Evans is, indeed, after those juicy anecdotes from Miss Gardner, but she isn’t playing along. There are showy moments, however, when Mr. Gannis becomes each of her three husbands and we get a scene or two of the husbands interacting with Miss Gardner, but they reveal very little except for Mr. Gannis’s impressive portrayals.
In the end, Ava Gardner remains as elusive in this play as she has been since her heyday in the movies. That may be the point of the play, but despite its flashy production, Ava: The Secret Conversations fails to tell any secrets in a satisfying manner. It is not for want of trying to make this a bit different from the typical celebrity tell-all play, but the title ultimately promises more than the play delivers.
