Some people use a Magic 8 ball to help them navigate life. Cook uses public bathrooms. This immersive, sweet, and thoughtful musical comedy show lifts a mirror up to bathroom graffiti in all its glory, history, and candour and delivers a funny, clever and sensitive performance covering so much of human connection. Much like an evening spent in a venue toilet might.
‘The Writing On The Wall’ is set within the intimate location of a fictional dive bar public loo. Cook fosters a conspiratorial connection from the off with cheek and aplomb. There’s a commode on stage, pants are down, and she’s calling out for loo roll favours from the audience. It’s a quirky and original premise that normalises the fleeting closeness between strangers where there are no taboos. And also includes upbeat fingerpicking songs. Of course.
Lyrics are taken from the treasure trove of bathroom graffiti Cook has researched in her academia career and beyond. They’re funny, poignant, wise, ridiculous, sassy, deeply unique – apart from when they’re hilariously not, and universally recognisable. With a voice and melodies reminiscent of Joni Mitchell, Cook’s tone can be haunting one moment and warm the next, skipping across the high notes like pebbles on a lake’s surface, breezy and impressive.
There’s something of a linear nature to this engagement too, alongside the ingenious songs. Cook’s bathroom clientele character arc is familiar and true, as she moves from girl holding amusing court, to girl confessing, to girl ready to leave her plumbed-in refuge. It’s sweet with an iron core. Vulnerable with an exit plan.
Cook’s songs have become something of an internet sensation, but ‘The Writing On The Stall’ is more than the sum of its catchy parts. Strung together as a whole, including Ancient Greek art history, a one-minute dissertation précis, a diamond-hard confession, and multiple pairs of underpants, Cook shines a light on the solidarity of random people in a small room. As well as the messages they leave behind.
