Gwyneth Goes Skiing
Rating: ★★
Venue: Pleasance Courtyard, Edinburgh

She's the Goop-founding, Door-Sliding, Shakespeare-In-Loving, consciously-uncoupling Hollywood superstar. He's a retired optometrist from Utah. In 2016, they went skiing. A story of love, betrayal and skiing – where you are the jury. After sell-out London runs, join harbingers of queer chaos Awkward Productions (Diana: The Untold and Untrue Story), original songs by Leland (RuPaul, Troye Sivan, Cher), with a special video appearance by Trixie Mattel (RuPaul's Drag Race All Stars 3 winner), and the singing voices of Darren Criss (Glee, The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story), and Catherine Cohen (Edinburgh Comedy Award winner).

Gwyneth Goes Skiing is a unique retelling of the facts (maybe) of the court case that has recently been capturing the attention of the world. Off the back of very successful London runs and a sell-out show at the Fringe last year (Diana: the Untold and Untrue Story), the show is set to be a huge hit, with tickets for the entire week already sold out and limited availability going forward. 

The show attempting to discuss the controversy utilising audience participation, where unsuspecting audience members are enlisted to play the supporting roles and the rest of the audience act as the jury, whilst Gwyneth Paltrow and Terry Sanderson are played by Linus Karp and Joseph Martin respectively. Other prominent features in the show are the voices of Darren Criss and Cat Cohen as the singers, the voice of Leland as the deer of deer valley (and composer) and a special video appearance from Trixie Mattel. Gwyneth’s daughter Apple, aptly represented by an apple on a stick, lawyer Kristin Vanorman and various woodland creatures are taken on by puppets. 

The absolute star of the show for me was Ciara Pidgeon, stage manager extraordinaire, who took on multiple roles during this show and left me cracking up every time she stepped on stage.

The show bills itself as a play with music rather than a musical, nevertheless there was only a handful of songs throughout the show, none of which were sung live but lip-synced over backing tracks; a choice I didn’t really understand. The inclusion of lines actually spoken during the trial was a nice touch, of course - with a necessarily dramatised rendition in song of Gwyneth’s iconic closing line ‘I wish you well’. At the end of this overly dramatised retelling, audiences are encouraged to scan a QR code which allows them to vote for the winner of the case. So far Gwyneth has won every time, but apparently there is an alternate ending that is yet to be seen if the results ever do swing the other way.

Admittedly I have not been following the case as closely as some and there were many jokes that I didn’t expect to understand, but to be honest I struggled to find the humour even in the ones that I did. There was uproarious laughter from the entire auditorium throughout so I have no doubt this show absolutely has its place and is being enjoyed by its audiences, unfortunately it just wasn’t a show for me.

You can book tickets to see Gwyneth Goes Skiing, here.

Review by Rachel