I started feeling complicit in the exploitation of Ava Gardner by even attending “Ava: The Secret Conversations,” a play that Elizabeth McGovern has adapted from a book of the same name by celebrity journalist Peter Evans. 

This is not, obviously, the reaction McGovern intends.

 I assumed the actress, best known recently as the upright Countess in “Downton Abbey,”  created this show for herself as a star vehicle, in order to demonstrate her range as a performer. She is not an obvious stand-in physically for the voluptuous and tempestuous femme fatale of the 1950s; she comes across visually most of the time in the role like a rich old lady; poised, thin, elegant, used to luxury. But she is a capable actress, and has a stellar costume designer in Toni-Leslie James , and together with wig designer Matthew Armentrout. they created a credible Ava in the majority of her scenes. McGovern is most memorable in her adept delivery of Gardner’s bluntness and her wit: “I made movies, I made out, I made a mess of my life. But I never made jam.”

To my surprise, though, McGovern said in a recent interview she was initially drawn more to the book than to the star. This threw me.

In 1988, two years before her death at the age of 67, Gardner, ill and broke, agreed reluctantly to hire Evans as a ghostwriter for her autobiography. She needed the money, but she resisted answering the personal questions that Evans peppered her with during their interview sessions, especially about her marriages to Mickey Rooney, Artie Shaw, and Frank Sinatra.

Gardner eventually nixed the book, in part because Evans had failed to disclose a contentious relationship he had had with Sinatra. Years later, long after Gardner had died (and not long before Evans himself did), Evans decided to market their interviews as  “Ava: The Secret Conversations,” depicting himself as a central character playing an astute cat and mouse game with his elusive and seductive subject. 

There seemed something sleazy in this, and I thought the play picked up on it, when  Peter’s literary agent Ed Victor (portrayed by Chris Thorn largely as an off-stage voice) presses Peter (Aaron Costa Ganis)  to get Ava to dish on her celebrity husbands. Ed thinks juicy gossip about them is more likely to sell her book than anything about her, given her fading star; in particular, he repeatedly urges him to try to get her to confirm an anecdote about the size of Sinatra’s penis. Later, he tells Peter to be careful ab out falling under Ava’s spell; “she’ll eat you alive…She’s had toy boys since before Cher had toys.” Surely, we’re meant to see Ed as a slimeball.

Then Peter is at first reluctant to take on the assignment because he aspires to be a novelist, but, after he learns about her impoverished childhood in Grabtown, North Carolina, he wonders whether he can fulfill his literary ambitions with Ava, comparing her life to the Joads in “The Grapes of Wrath,” viewing himself as the John Steinbeck of celebrity ghostwriters.  Surely we’re meant to see him as a fathead.

Eventually Ganis as Peter morphs into each of her three husbands: (Mickey Rooney: “Well, I’ll be a rat’s ass! You’re fresh as a daisy and hotter han a hooker’s doorknob on payday.” Artie Shaw: “Do you think they think you’re Bette Davis? No. They think you look swell in a bathing suit.” Frank Sinatra: “why the hell shouldn’t I have friends? Every Tom Dick and Harry I’ve ever met is jacking off to your picture every night”) Surely we’re meant to see them as crude and abusive.

But as “Ava” unfolds, I stopped being sure of its point of view; I wondered whether McGovern didn’t just adapt Evans’ book, but also adopt his attitude. We learn more about Peter Evans than we do about Ava Gardner’s movie career. We watch her arguing with a husband about her work; we hear brief mention of a few titles; we see a several second-long clips from her best-known movies, such as “The Killers” and “The Barefoot Contessa,” although none are identified. It made me want to go home and watch them — out of curiosity, but maybe just a little bit in penance.

Ava: The Secret Conversations
New York City Center through September 14
Running time: 90 minutes no intermission
Tickets: $63 – $219
Directed by Moritz von Stuelpnagel 
Scenic design by David Meyer, costume design by Toni-Leslie James, lighting design by Amith Chandrashaker, sound design by Cricket S. Myers, projection design by Alex Basco Koch, and wig design by Matthew Armentrout. 
Cast: Elizabeth McGovern as Ava Gardner, Aaron Costa Ganis as Peter Evans and others, and Chris Thorn as Ed Victor and others