Review by Kate Gaul
Linus Karp and Joseph Martin – AKA Awkward productions - presents “Gwyneth Goes Skiing”. It is a play based on the true events that occurred between award-winning actress and entrepreneur Gwyneth Paltrow and retired optometrist Terry Sanderson back in 2016: a skiing accident and subsequent court case in 2023. One party claimed, “permanent traumatic brain injury, four broken ribs [and] loss of enjoyment of life”. The other “lost half a day of skiing”. It’s a 90-minute play with two actors, a puppet, a deadpan stage assistant, Gwyneth’s daughter (played by an actual apple) and a load of audience interaction. The audience is cast as the jury and get to decide who wins the case via a QR code at the end. There’s a pop culture video montage that flashes all of Gwyneth’s films, locations of the action of the work and text for the onstage audience participants. It’s a comedy meets musical – less musical - and the musical part is pretty thin – roughly lip synched pre-records that don’t further the action or character. Possibly an element that could be jettisoned from this overly long and slightly undergraduate comedy even though the soundtrack is helmed by singer-songwriter and “Drag Race” music guru Leland, with original numbers performed by (recorded) Darren Criss and Catherine Cohen. A fluffy show ultimately laced with an endearing pop culture queerness.
Karp’s portrayal of Paltrow is joyous and mesmerising. A natural Swedish accent renders this Hollywood star even more eccentric and peculiar. It’s all deliberately slightly wrong with misplaced emphasis on particular words, and Paltrow-fying vocabulary e.g. Gwynocent. It’s funny and I was entranced by this confident, elegant and very funny central performance. The text is all gossip and verbatim at the centre of the trial “She really did ask that” is a constant refrain to the audience. And of course, then there is her product lifestyle line GOOP – it’s all just so mad! But you know what they say about truth and fiction!
Martin has the harder task to play old white dude Sanderson. He’s not inherently funny except he is drunk on the fame by association. He also manipulates a puppet as his lawyer. There is a delightful carboard deer and fluffy hand puppets to represent the natural animals of Deer Valley where the accident took place. These elements render the piece with a ”mum-look-at-me” vibe
In a nutshell: Karp is flawless as a comedian in this camp dissection of celebrity nonsense. With another period in the rehearsal studio and a hefty trim this could be gold.
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