Gwyneth Goes Skiing review

Linus Karp is making something of a habit of playing slightly ethereal celebrity blonde women, after smiling serenely through Awkward Productions’ last show, Diana: The Untold and Untrue Story. Here, the focus is on Oscar-winning actor and Goop founder Gwyneth Paltrow.

In case you managed to miss the headlines last year, Gwyneth Goes Skiing pivots on the infamous 2023 case that saw retired optometrist Terry Sanderson suing Paltrow for $300,000 in damages, alleging she had caused him permanent injuries after skiing into him at the Deer Valley Resort in Utah. She countersued him for a single dollar – and won.

If you’ve seen any previous shows from Awkward Productions – a company Karp runs with Joseph Martin, who here plays ill-fated, grumpy Sanderson – you’ll know that any passing resemblance to reality is incidental. It’s a choice that makes sense: Paltrow’s life, from her “conscious uncoupling” from Coldplay singer Chris Martin to the wackier end of her wellness company’s product line, is difficult to outstrip on the parody front.

Instead, Karp and Martin unshackle their show from any restraints, creating fantastical encounters between Paltrow and woodland creatures, and representing her daughter Apple as, well, an apple. Its cabaret cavalcade of songs, deliberately low-fi props and set design conjures up an anarchic chaos that turns celebrity woes into a cracked fairytale that takes potshots at everyone.

It does take a little while to warm up: initially, the jokes are a little predictable, the pacing uncertain and the stage feels bare. What energises the show – and Karp and Martin – is the audience participation. We’re enlisted to play girlfriends, boyfriends and expert witnesses, reading dialogue prompts.
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