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Pleasance Courtyard Bunker One

Three stars


Jessica Regan is unpacking her props box at the opening of her solo memoir of a life in London flats. This is what Regan has effectively been doing for the last twenty years. Moving from Cork to Acton as a hungry young drama student expecting the streets to be swinging, to her soon to be ex abode in Walthamstow, these are the bookends of a life in boxes and the accumulated baggage along the way.  

 

The names of all sixteen of Regan’s former neighbourhoods are pinned up behind her as if waiting for the highest bid as she invites the audience to select one. What follows depending on which district is picked is a selection of yarns that jump across time as well as place to make up a patchwork of temporary addresses, broken relationships and empty rooms. 

 

Regan invites us in to her world with an easy charm as she’s fixing things up. There are a few gaps that need filled in to give things context, but Regan is totally open about how she got here, even as she’s forced to pack her things away again at the end of the show. For terminal renters forever priced out of big cities on the up, Regan’s litany of permanent transience is all too close to home.

 

Pleasance Courtyard Bunker One until 26th August, 3.30pm.


The List, August 2024

 

ends

 

 

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