Billy Boggins: A Bathroom Story – Bewley’s Cafe Theatre – Review
by Frank L.

Billy Boggins: A Bathroom Story – Written and Performed by Gary Cooke

September 30th – October 19th, 2024 At 1pm​

Gary Cooke is well-known for his appearances on Après Match, the RTE show whose sketches send up the media and soccer elite. In this production, he is Billy Boggins, a salesman in the family-run bathroom business of Boggins where his brother Bobby is the CEO. Billy is also in charge of the under-12 soccer team on which his son plays.  He is separated from his wife but still gets on with her.  However, he has a tense relationship with Bobby who has gone up a bit in the world (“moved up the hill”) so to speak. As a result of an incident during an under-12 soccer match, he encounters one Edward Duffy. Duffy is an apparently successful big shot in the world of bathrooms and without too much difficulty entices Billy to become CEO of his successful operation. So Billy describes the various people he encounters and the places he visits in this far more fast-moving world which he has now innocently entered.

The set has an elegant up-to-the-minute chic bathroom transposed onto the back wall which reminds you that through all Billy’s travels (including Belfast and Amsterdam), the world in which Billy inhabits is that of bathrooms. The travel storyline enables Cooke to mimic engagingly the accents and foibles of those that Billy meets on his journey including the very different accents and patterns of speech of Billy and Edward.  He has them down to a tee.

As his travels continue, Cooke changes his jackets and even doffs a tie with a matching breast pocket handkerchief when needs be. Cooke starts at a fair clip which is difficult to maintain throughout the almost hour-long piece, particularly in the quieter moments of the script. Perhaps a little pruning would make it tighter.

Bathrooms and kitchens are rooms which sell houses according to Cooke in an interview he did with Sean Rocks on RTE’s Arena. A great deal of money is spent on them. In this production, Cooke enters into the underbelly of the world of a bathroom salesman who helps make all those hopes and aspirations happen. But that is only one side of the coin, the bathroom salesman has a life outside the bathroom too. Cooke shows the viewer the point where those two worlds meet.