'I Wish You Well' review — the infamous Gwyneth Paltrow ski trial becomes a hoot of a musical

Read our review of I Wish You Well, starring Diana Vickers and Marc Antolin, now in performances at the Criterion Theatre to 12 October.

Collisons take multiple forms. In 2016, a retired optometrist called Terry Sanderson sued Gwyneth Paltrow for life-changing injuries (and $300,000 in damages) sustained when she allegedly collided into him on a Utah ski slope. She counter-sued for a notional sum of $1 and, in 2023, won the case, pausing on her way out of the courtroom to remark to Sanderson, then almost 80, “I wish you well”.

This earth-shattering contretemps caught the public imagination, resulting in a musical, Gwyneth Goes Skiing, that was seen Off West End last December and then again in Edinburgh last month. But before you can invoke the fabled London bus analogy, along came I Wish You Well: The Gwyneth Paltrow Ski-Trial Musical, which also played Edinburgh and has now come to the Criterion Theatre for a short run, in keeping with the brevity of a show that runs just over an hour.

The talent on display is undeniable. Diana Vickers long ago asserted her vocal chops on The X Factor and tears into Rick Pearson’s score (additional material by Roger Dipper) like a dog with a bone, which seems an apt analogy for someone whose fondness for bone broth is referenced in passing. So too is her firm’s lucrative manufacturing of various anatomical aids, said enterprise here called by the name Poop, one assumes for legal reasons. (At the start of the show, we’re all asked to breathe in, so as to better experience vaginal smells. Hmmm.)

Terry, in turn, is granted the satiric surname Sightworsens so as not to directly incriminate the defence. He is in the eminently capable hands of the wonderful Marc Antolin, a onetime Olivier nominee who will soon be seen opposite Andy Nyman in The Producers towards the end of the year, and whose engaging wit is the indisputable high point of the director Shiv Rabheru’s production.

Quite what the show means to accomplish isn’t entirely clear. Its value as parody – the judge on view is Judge Jude (Idriss Kargbo), sibling of a rather better-known legal eagle with a similar name – is inevitably constrained. Sure, the consumerist zeal of “Gwynnie P” (as she is known) merits a yuk or two, but the show falls as decidedly on the side of the Oscar-winning actress as did the Park City jury: as celebrity trials go, this one was a slam dunk.

An extended nod to the brilliant number “Roxie”, from Chicago, only reminds us how brilliantly that iconic John Kander-Fred Ebb musical continues to skewer a society in thrall to the headlines, for good or ill. This show by comparison registers more as an excitable footnote, the sort of thing best seen over a few drinks at the end of a busy day of Festival playgoing that risks looking rather exposed left to its own West End devices.

The athletic quartet of actors is completed by Tori Allen-Martin as Kristin, Terry's judge-turned-Gwynnie’s gal pal, who enquires as to Brad Pitt’s penis – now there’s a first – and indulges the meta quality of much of the writing: “Can I sing you a song,” Kristin asks, “about the content we just discussed?”

I can’t say that Vickers’ speaking voice sounds much like Paltrow – the actress in fact has a whinier register – but she looks like she is having fun, as, one assumes, was 2024 Olivier award-winner Arlene Phillips (Guys & Dolls), who is on hand as choreographer and is the biggest name of all this musical’s creatives.

I confess during idle moments at pondering a mash-up between these two ventures: I mean, might Gwynnie and Terry make an apt partnership on Adelaide and Nathan’s defining duet, “Sue Me”? You heard it here first.

I Wish You Well is at the Criterion Theatre through 12 October. Book I Wish You Well tickets on London Theatre.

Photo credits: I Wish You Well (Photographs by Mark Senior)