Gwyneth Goes Skiing – Pleasance Theatre

Joseph Martin and Linus Karp in Gwyneth Goes Skiing at the Pleasance Theatre, London. Picture: Jonny Ruff

Gwyneth Goes Skiing continues at the Pleasance Theatre, London until 16 February 2024.

Star rating: three stars ★ ★ ★ ✩ ✩

One of the more bizarre televisual delights of 2023 was a civil trial between a retired optometrist and the owner of a lifestyle website, countersuing each other over who had run into whom while both were skiing in Utah in 2016.

Of course, the reason the courtroom drama garnered such attention was that one of the participants was Gwyneth Paltrow, A-list actress and founder of Goop, a brand with a notorious eclectic line of, shall we say, “New Age” health and beauty products.

While the trial was televised in complete seriousness, the inherent campness within has made it a rich target for Linus Karp and Joseph Martin. Together as Awkward Productions, the pair have previously created How to Live a Jellicle Life and Diana: The Untold and Untrue Story, which have been camp, queer successes around the country.

In their first two-act play with songs (and not, as the many column inches about its creation in the worldwide press would attest, a musical), Karp and Martin have taken the Paltrow ski trial and created Gwyneth Goes Skiing. And while it contains just as much silliness, bending of the truth and madcap audience interaction as their previous works, some of the material feels a little thin at this length.

Act I takes place in a ski resort in Deer Valley, Utah, where the fateful event occurred. Karp’s Gwyneth is at pains to remind us just how many Hollywood films she’s been in (although, like the actress herself, she denies all knowledge of which Marvel superhero films she has starred in). Her nemesis is former optometrist Terry Sanderson (Martin), holidaying at the same resort with his current (and soon-to-be former) girlfriend who, like Paltrow’s partner Brad Falchuk, is played by a member of the audience reading lines off autocue.

The problem with this whole act is that there isn’t much true-life content with which Karp and Martin can engage. So instead, while we get fun interludes with snow and wind effects in the attempt to emulate ski slopes on a minuscule budget, we also get conversations with glove puppet animals and repeated jokes about Paltrow’s daughter being called Apple (and played, with requisite silliness, by an apple carried on a string by a deadpan stage manager).

There is much fun here, especially when every table in the Pleasance’s cabaret room is called upon to pelt plastic snowballs at Sanderson. But we also get an imagined conversation between the two leads, bringing the comedic pace down to a crawl. Indeed, Karp’s scripted Gwyneth rarely affords the actor the chance to unleash his improvisational skills; a skit where he judges audience members’ ideas for new Goop products sees the actor loosen up a little, and the performance becomes all the better for that.

Act II picks up the pace and remedies the situation by moving the location and timeframe forward to the 2023 trial. Here, the production can also benefit from some of the verbatim moments that made the trial so watchable. Most of these come from Sanderson’s lawyer, Kristin VanOrman, played here as a puppet operated by Martin. Van Orman is portrayed as a starstruck fan of Paltrow’s – not difficult, given that much of the dialogue in the play gives her comes verbatim from her performance in court.

And so, in what should be a cross-examination about who skied into who (and who should receive compensation – Sanderson sued Paltrow for $300,000, while she countersued for $1), VanOrman compliments Paltrow’s height and asks questions about whether she is friends with Taylor Swift.

The gags come thick and fast throughout the courtroom showdown, and while there are callbacks and payoffs to some of Act I’s imagined scenarios, the elements plundered from the real-life silliness succeed.

And the songs? They are mostly okay. Composed by Leland, the resident composer for the song challenges in RuPaul’s Drag Race, like those numbers, they are primarily performed in lip sync. The best of these is ‘I Wish You Well’, which takes Paltrow’s iconic exit line (whispered to Sanderson after sashaying away from her court victory) and converts it into a high-energy pop duet.

As well as the improved tightness of Act II, Gwyneth Goes Skiing is enhanced by the increasingly relaxed atmosphere of an audience that has made return trips to the bar. Indeed, throughout, Awkward’s show would work even better as a tightened-up late-night show rather than a sprawl that starts at 7 pm.

But whatever time of day you arrive into Karp and Martin’s orbit, they assure you a good time. Gwyneth Goes Skiing may not be the best of their shows. Still, as the first step into expanding their repertoire beyond one-hour romps, it offers a fun evening that celebrates the campness inherent within Hollywood A-list celebrity in a very queer, and uniquely Awkward, way.

Scott Matthewman