Awkward Productions, the team behind the 2023 Edinburgh Fringe sell-out Smash Diana: The Untold and Untrue Story, returns with ‘Gwyneth Goes Skiing’.
If there’s a Fringier show on offer this year I’ll be amazed. The effort put into staging the show is downright impressive. The chaos invited into proceedings is also impressive. Parodying the lives of the rich and bizarre isn’t new, but there’s a uniquely controlled insanity baked into the script.
Without giving too much away there’s a prodigious amount of (consenting members of the) audience involvement in the show. Not as victims, but as members of the cast. How this is achieved and developed you will have to go and see for yourselves. It introduces an unknown quantity, but my guess is that most nights will find the results incredibly entertaining. Those who’ve seen Diana, will know what to expect.
For those unaware, or too young to care, about the life of actress Gwyneth Paltrow, the show is based on her 2016 collision with a retired optometrist on the ski slopes of Utah and the ensuing lawsuit.
In the lead roles of Gwyneth, and her legal enemy Terry Sanderson, we have the mercurial Linus Karp, and a pugnacious Joseph Martin. They ham it up to high heaven, pitching pathologically self-assued Goop Queen against an optometrist who’s defining feature is being ‘from Utah.’
However, Gwyneth Goes Skiiing’ goes way-beyond caricature: way beyond! Before the 80 minutes is over, the show has woven a weird spell of verbatim theatre, puppetry, big number lip-sync, and a memorable recreation of the fateful collision. The quality of the bespoke song writing and ‘sing-over’ is particularly lush.
That said, the living, and lawyered-up Gwyneth Paltrow doesn’t offer quite the same richness of hunting ground as the deceased Diana did last year. A celebrity who sells vagina candles is tougher to parody perhaps.
Nevertheless, ‘Gwyneth Goes Skiiing’ is a cracking show, one that will be significantly different each time, but with the same core of tamed insanity.
Show Details
Venue: Pleasance Courtyard – Forth
Dates: Jul 31 Aug 1-4, 6-11, 13-18, 20-26
Showtimes: 15:30
Running Time: 1 hour 20 minutes
Age Recommendation: 14+
Price: From £11 (concessions available)
Accessibility
The performance space, ‘Forth’, is wheelchair accessible.
The venue, ‘Pleasance Courtyard’, has provided the following accessibility information: ‘A full accessibility guide can be found at http://www.pleasance.co.uk. Customers with access requirements are encouraged to contact the venue in advance and to make themselves known to a member of the team upon arrival. Full venue site is accessible, Wheelchair accessible toilet, No reserved accessible parking, No on street blue badge parking, Assistance dogs welcome in all areas. The Pleasance Courtyard is located uphill when accessing the venue from Cowgate. The outdoor spaces of the venue are a mix of cobblestones and tarmacked surfaces’.
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