Few subjects are off-limits in the book Ava Gardner: The Secret Conversations, the result of several informal interviews between the British journalist Peter Evans and the actress Ava Gardner, conducted in London between 1988 and 1990, the year she died. Indeed, Gardner withdrew from the project at the last minute, fearing legal repercussions, and the book was not published until 2013, a year after Evans died. Fast-forward to 2020. Pulling the unread Secret Conversations from her shelf, Elizabeth McGovern (Downton Abbey’s Cora Crawley) immediately saw the theatrical potential in both sides of the conversation: a reporter wooing memories from the woman once known as “the world’s most beautiful animal,” and that woman recalling, with emotion and humor, a Hollywood life and a bygone era. Gardner was married to Mickey Rooney, Artie Shaw, and Frank Sinatra; she was involved with Howard Hughes; and she was unforgettable in movies as diverse as Show Boat, Mogambo, and The Sun Also Rises. McGovern herself has written this two-person play, in which she stars with Aaron Costa Ganis. Moritz von Stuelpnagel directs. —Bridget Arsenault