The last words spoken by Gwyneth Paltrow to the man who sued her for hundreds of thousands of dollars titles this musical tribute to the absurdity of the entire event. And to match the event, this is totally absurd. Great fun, but don’t expect anything which tells you what actually happened.
And that is the point. This is not a drama which will in any way give you the lowdown but just deliver the punchy soundtrack and the high kicks of production values that are probably seeing beyond the Fringe to runs at venues where they can pack em in and sell em high.
This is no less entertaining for that reason. The storyline is well enough known that to go back over it would almost be pointless, but with a cast list of a judge, a lawyer and the litigants, that is all we get. The band is loud, the music catchy enough and the chutzpah in overdrive. You tap along and get with it, which is sheer entertainment; perhaps the script could do with less of the glitzy and the fawning over Gwyny P, but it captures some of the mood of the time. This small-town courtroom in Ohio got respite form parking tickets to take us all to the edge of our seats in what just looked like—mainly because it was—a heightened soap opera played out in a courtroom. It was the bubble gum for the eyes in comparison to other courtroom dramas from the US like Heard and Depp.
This is where I Wish You Well comes in. it does not try and pretend it is anything other than a high-kicking piece of fluff. And what fluff. It has tremendous performances, especially from Idriss Kargbo as the Judge. His performance, especially his dancing Makes You Look! The costume reveal where he is a fashion-fawning devotee is particularly memorable—especially the splits… I winced.
But the entire cast sparkle—Dina Vickers as Paltrow, Tori Allen-Martin as Kristin Fangirlin and Marc Antolin as Terry Sightworsens. There is a verve around them and a vitality that gets the audience very much on their side. You get on their rollercoaster and keep going with the pace set at eleventy stupid. Nobody wants to question any of the absurdity of Paltrow’s brand Poop or the scent of her candles. People just want to stay on for the duration of wherever I Wish You Well is taking us. And they sell it well.
With choreography from Arlene Phillips, and direction from Shiv Rabheru, it’s a relentless ride. Roger Dipper and Rick Pearson have fashioned—see what I did there?—something filled with gags aplenty, whilst the legs akimbo production values stun.
It is a musical of its time. And if you like musicals, then you will love this, because it is unashamedly refusing to make sense and plough the rich furrow of such absurdity in modern life. There are no life-affirming messages here and it has a firmly adult pitch. It’s a night out to forget your worries and your woes and laugh at the absurdity of a little town that lost itself and found fame—for all the wrong reasons. But if this is what you crave, gorge away.