Halfway through act one, the main character, Oscar-winning actress turned wellness guru Gwyneth Paltrow, stepped onto the stage wearing a baby pink ski suit and carrying an old pair of Rossignol skis. Paltrow made an exaggerated show of schussing, bending low and sweeping her poles back and forth as she delivered an extended monologue on the joys of skiing. Then, a conifer wheeled itself on stage to her right, with a plush-toy squirrel in its branches. To her left, a giant cardboard cutout of a deer appeared, and all three of them broke into song.
Welcome to the wonderfully campy world of Gwyneth Goes Skiing, a play that’s loosely (very loosely) based on the actress’s “ski crash trial,” which played out in a Park City, Utah, courtroom last March. Initially scheduled for a ten day pre-Christmas run at the Pleasance Theater in London, UK, the sold-out show—which I was lucky enough to secure a ticket for—has proved so popular that it’s now been booked to return at the beginning of February.
The Paltrow seen on stage was, of course, not the Goop founder herself, but actor Linus Karp in drag. The skiing was hilariously fake too—it was mostly “Paltrow” wiggling her butt as a few paper snowflakes were blown around by an underpowered fan. The cardboard cutout of the deer, by contrast, spoke and sang in the real voice of Leland—a Los Angeles-based composer, producer, and songwriter for the likes of Cher and Selena Gomez who has been nominated for real-life Golden Globe and Grammy awards. The story of how these various elements came together in a small, 200-seat theater, thousands of miles from Utah, is almost as surreal as the action on stage.
Those who watched the ski crash trial—if they watched it at all—did so with a mixture of incredulity and awe: incredulity at the pettiness of the charges brought against Paltrow by retired Utah optometrist Terry Sanderson, who sued her her over a crash on the slopes of Deer Valley, and awe at the vast sums they each spent on lawyers to defend themselves. As Linus Karp and his writing partner Joseph Martin watched the case unfold, however, they saw a musical comedy in the making.
“Whispering, ‘I wish you well’ to him at the end of the trial, as she walks out of the courtroom? That’s theater,” Martin said with admirtion, when we met in the Pleasance’s cozy bar a few hours before the show. “There were a number of those things,” added Karp, who squeezed in cross-legged next to them on a tiny sofa. The pair, who both identify as queer, have a kindred sense of humor and frequently finish each other’s sentences. “She’s interesting because she’s not just a Hollywood star,” Karp said. “There are so many sides to her, there’s the Goop side, naming a child Apple, consciously uncoupling…” “And taking this LA life and sticking her in a courtroom in Utah, that’s already bizarre…” Martin added. “And then you have that lawyer who was asking things like ‘are you friends with Taylor Swift?’ Or ‘how tall are you?’” Karp continued, “there were so many ridiculous lines in there.”
While the show is packed full of surreal gags that the pair wrote themselves, many of the strangest sentences are lifted directly from the court transcripts. “Some of the verbatim stuff is so ridiculous, and our dialogue as a writing duo is also ridiculous, so I think as an audience member, if you’re not hyper aware of everything that was said in the trial, there will be moments where you’re like, I don’t know if this is verbatim or not,” Martin said.
In the play, Martin, who plays Terry Sanderson, has some bizarre—and apparently real—exchanges with the actor playing his lawyer. They also get in some great, deadpan British gags about Utah, and Deer Valley Resort itself becomes something of a running joke throughout the piece. Neither of the actors has ever been to the state, let alone the ski resort. “I’ve never set foot on a pair of skis,” explains Martin. This allows them the artistic license needed to turn the sublime—a luxurious ski destination—into the ridiculous, and gives them the freedom to imagine an entire backstory on the slopes. Later in the production, when the action turns to the courtroom and the actors have real words to work with, they go all out. When Karp delivers Paltrow’s immortal line “I wish you well” (a moment he affectionately describes as “just peak camp,”) he can’t resist making a literal song and dance out of it.
Like the real-life comedic dialogue, many of the songs in the show landed in Karp and Martin’s laps fully-formed. The pair wrote two previous shows together under their company name Awkward Productions—Diana: The Untold & Untrue Story, about the titular Princess, and How to Live a Jellicle Life: Life Lessons from 2019 Hit Movie Musical Cats. (Although the film was savaged by critics, Karp adored it.) Last summer, they were performing both shows at the Edinburgh Fringe, the massive festival of comedy and theater which takes over the Scottish capital every August, when the songwriter-producer Leland came to see both of them. “We went for dinner with him, and he was just really friendly, saying ‘if you ever need a song for one of your shows like I’d love to work with you’,” Karp said.
When they mentioned that they were working on an idea about the Paltrow trial, Leland—who serves as the resident songwriter on RuPaul’s Drag Race—revealed that he already had some ideas that might work. He’d been working on a RuPaul “rusical” segment about the ski crash case, he explained, but for logistical reasons, it had never been featured on TV. As well as his genius with music, Leland brought a level of enthusiasm to the project that both surprised and delighted Karp and Martin. “He’s been like ‘oh can we make it bigger? Can we do more?’” Karp said. “And now he’s saying ‘let’s talk in January before you reopen in February and let’s see what we can add,” says Martin.
Although the songs are a huge highlight, the creators insist that it’s a “play with music,” rather than a full-blown musical, and (without giving away too many spoilers) it’s the enforced audience participation that really steals the show. At the beginning, various unsuspecting viewers are nominated to play walk-on parts. They get dragged on stage periodically to deliver lines with the straightest faces they can muster, with predictably hilarious results. At the end, the audience is asked to act as the jury, and vote on who ‘wins’ the court case. So far, Karp’s Paltrow has won it every night, but there is, apparently, an alternative ending, should Martin’s Sanderson ever emerge victorious.
As to what the real-life antagonists would think of the play? Neither actor would speculate about Sanderson’s reaction, but Martin said that Paltrow “definitely knows about it.” Almost as soon as the play was announced, the London Times wrote a short column which was picked up Hollywood bible Variety, and from there—much like the original trial itself—it went viral. Martin and Karp, who are more used to being covered in niche comedy publications, suddenly found themselves featured on British breakfast TV, U.S. gossip sites like TMZ, and newspapers from Australia, Brazil, and Mexico. Another journalist they spoke to, the pair explained, had flown all the way from Utah just to cover that evening’s show. “When it all kicked off quite a few of the publications wrote ‘We’ve written to Gwyneth’s reps for comment,’” Martin explained. “She’s never actually commented, which is probably for the best. But Leland had a text from a friend who’s worked with her, who said she would love it.”
Despite the mockery, the pair remain fans of Paltrow. Their “piss-taking,” they explained, is born from a place of love. “I think the biggest thing that I have learnt from working on this is just how self aware she actually is,” Martin said. “You don’t release a candle called “This Smells Like My Vagina” and another one called “This Smells Like My Orgasm,” if you are not acutely aware of exactly what that does,” they said. “We’re poking fun at everyone and everything,” Karp said, “but ultimately I like to think it’s a celebration of her.” A celebration it might be, but what Paltrow would make of her on-stage avatar’s ski technique is anyone’s guess.
Tickets are on sale now for the extended run of Gwyneth Goes Skiing at London’s Pleasance Theater from January 30 to February 16.