Alessandra Assaf delivers a spellbinding solo turn as one of the most glamorous screen goddesses in Hollywood history in Twelve O’clock Tales with Ava Gardner, now playing Sunday matinees at the Whitefire Theatre in Sherman Oaks.

The year is 1974, and Ava (then 51) is shooting the Universal Pictures blockbuster Earthquake opposite Charlton Heston, and though this morning’s shoot started out smoothly enough with “stuntmen and extras screaming their heads off” as Styrofoam buildings fell around them, a special effects snafu has sent Ava back to her private dressing room with time on her hands.

And so, with bills mounting and no intention of selling her jewels to pay them, Miss Gardner takes advantage of the break to work on her memoir, recounting tales of the men who were her husbands and/or lovers and the women who were her friends.

Among the latter is her longtime personal assistant Mearene “Reenie” Jordan, an unseen presence in the room as Ava sets about reminiscing into a handy cassette recorder.

Among the men in Miss Gardner’s nostalgic trip down memory lane are the three she married:

First husband Mickey Rooney. (“That short stop finally slid into home… but not until our honeymoon.”)

Second husband Artie Shaw. (“I absolutely married for love…But he broke my heart, that egghead bastard snob.”)

Third husband Frank Sinatra. (“That man could flirt without saying a word! We only get one life, and I don’t have a doubt in my mind that he is the love of mine.”)

And a couple of lovers too:

Billionaire Howard Hughes. (“The man was mental! He had every Joe I so much as spoke to investigated!)

Physically abusive George C. Scott, her costar in John Huston’s The Bible. (“I can’t watch that film cause I know underneath those Sarah robes, I’m black and blue and in a body cast from a broken arm and collarbone.”)

And her fellow screen goddesses, women she counted as among her dearest friends:

Lana Turner. (“Always such a good dame. You know I started smoking because of her!”)

Grace Kelly. (“Such a sweet, sweetheart of a woman. She can make an angel seem sneaky, but she was a real minx!”)

Lena Horne. (“The greatest success of my career was my beautiful friend’s biggest disappointment.”)

Though the primary focus of Assaf and Michael Lorre’s script* is on the men and women in Ava Gardner’s life, Ava does reminisce early on about her childhood in the unfortunately named Grabtown, North Carolina, and about the fact that even though she had a more than respectable singing voice (“Lena said I was good. Damned good!”), “MGM wouldn’t even listen to my recordings. Before I sang a note, they’d already hired a girl to overdub me” (That was in Show Boat, a movie musical that had Ava playing the role that African American Lena Horne was not given the chance to play).

And Assaf makes it clear how wrong MGM was, exhibiting some silky, smoky pipes in snippets from “One For The Road,” “Bill,” “Lush Life,” and “It Ain’t Necessarily So.”

Under Michael A. Shepperd’s astute direction, Assaf has audiences believing that Ava Gardner has somehow miraculously risen from the grave to spend seventy delicious minutes with us in a dressing room appointed by designer Irmgard Quint, who also designed Assaf’s slinky lounging wear.

Derrick McDaniel employs subtle lighting design shifts to underline Ava’s shifting moods, Jin Tor Brown gives the show appropriate sound effects when said effects are called for, and Shelia Dorn’s wig recreates Ava’s Earthquake look.

Mitch Rosander is stage manager. Gregory Gunter is dramaturg.

Perhaps not surprisingly, Sunday’s matinee audience was made up almost entirely of those old enough to have seen Ava’s 1950s and ‘60s hits when they were first released. Younger theatergoers may not recognize the name Ava Gardner, but to those who recall her talent and beauty, Alessandra Assaf does Miss Gardner proud.

*New material conceived by Michael A. Shepperd

Whitefire Theatre, 13500 Ventura Blvd., Sherman Oaks.
www.whitefiretheatre.com

–Steven Stanley
January 22, 2023
Photos: Frank Ishman

Tags: Alessandra Assaf, Ava Gardner, Los Angeles Theater Review, Michael Lorre, Whitefire Theatre