Gwynet goes skiing

This weekend we went to our local theater to see a play originally premiered in the UK this past February. 

It’s build a round a ski crash lawsuit that happened in Park City, more precisely in Deer Valley where Gwyneth Paltrow and Terry Sanderson collided on the ski slopes back in 2016. Three years later, Terry Sanderson, a retired optometrist sued Paltrow first for $3 million, then for $300,000, claiming she was responsible for the collision that caused him permanent traumatic brain injury. 

Paltrow counter-sued Sanderson saying that he was the faulty party. She sought $1 in damages, and repayment of her legal fees. At trial in March 2023, Sanderson was found at fault and this concluded a story that captivated Park City for a while. 

From that story “Gwyneth Goes Skiing” was produced by the Pleasance Theatre Trust of London , written and co-directed by Linus Karp and Joseph Martin and features an original music by Leland. 

This in fact is an extremely tongue in cheek satire peppered with very pop culture references, jokes, witticisms and even puppetry to show the antecedents leading up to the collision the and eventual court case. 

The show uses actual lines from the court case to further stage that strange series of events. Audience participation in this show was facilitated by some audience members playing specific roles, others threw snowballs at Sanderson while he was “skiing” to create the blizzards on the slopes that day. 

Finally, the play ended as the audience was asked to vote as members of the jury. Since we followed the story as it slowly unfolded around Park City, we were expecting a much better show and were left with a disappointing, far-fetched production that didn’t impress us that much. 

Yeah, it was British!