Like all big cities, London has always been a challenging place to live and work. Smog, sewage, soot and squalor have held the city together for centuries. However, the past 20 years has seen a dramatic escalation in factors that largely render the capital an exclusive urban enclave. London’s once cosmopolitan centre is now only affordable for a super-rich, culturally hollow, elite echelon of society. The shocking expense of being alive, blended with a housing crisis, stagnant wages and a generous slug of austerity, means that a simple day out in London becomes a Hunger Games battle for sanity and a surviving bank balance. Darwin’s Theory of Evolution has become crueller than nature, with gentrification, zero-hours contracts and inherited wealth skewing the odds.
Writing reviews for North West End UK is my careworn solution to the cost of theatre tickets. No city on the planet has such a varied abundance of theatrical offerings as London. Few can afford to enjoy the rich smorgasbord, and theatre should speak to the roiling rabble, not the 1%.
16 Postcodes by Jessica Regan enjoyed a critically acclaimed run at Edinburgh Fringe, before returning to the city that inspired its creation. It’s a one woman, one-hour show. Regan muses on lessons she’s learned in London’s sprawling jigsaw of districts, yards and manors that define its postal borders. The observations are wistful, witty and wise. This is a major achievement. Living in London could turn a serene nun into a seething serial killer. This city can break the toughest, biggest and most joyful among us. Hard faced pragmatism is the only way to traverse the metropolis. Evolving into a cold hearted, permanently livid husk is not only a London standard, but a survival tactic.
Regan hails from Ireland, where the only postcodes exist in Dublin and were an English imposition anyway. Storytelling is a national sport to the Irish, who use the skill to charm, gossip and escape the lashing rain. With that cultural blessing and a few years at a RADA, Regan has honed her craft with such devotion that she makes spinning a yarn look natural, spontaneous and easy. Obviously, it isn’t. Her company is comforting, engaging and occasionally spiky. She doesn’t draw blood or overly agitate the neural pathways. While an Irish heritage can make me partial to craic-heads and blarney, 16 Postcodes could do with a bit more Uprising and Rebel spirit.
With some audience participation, postcodes are picked at random, and Regan delivers like an anecdote jukebox. Hailing from Acton, Brixton, Maida Vale and Surbiton, to name a few, the tales are snapshots of crumbling relationships, post-drama school penury, sofa surfing and artistic resilience. Perhaps it was wise to avoid the rivalry that exists between postcodes and the attributes of geography, class, architecture and local culture that truly define a district. Keeping the show personal means swerving postcode gangs, the north/south divide and the fact that Londoners are territorial, loyal and highly opinionated about their ‘hood.
There are flashes of palatable rage about hostile street furniture, feckless landlords, rising rents and ever plunging living standards, but Regan isn’t here to stoke a revolution or pick a fight. Maybe she should. She’s got the chops. She’s Irish for feck’s sake, but her fire is dialled down. Despite the cosy, amusing and entertaining presentation, it’s hard not to read between the lines. Being a begging nomad through necessity and relying on the generosity of friends is a form of spiritual torture that eats your soul and tests the best relationships. I suspect there’s another show within Regan, also called 16 Postcodes that is mostly primal screaming, savage bitching, self-harm and sobbing. I’d enjoy that one too.
Whimsy is bang on trend at the moment, perhaps as a foil to all the divisive, vitriolic discourse that seethes through the nation. 16 Postcodes is a harmless balm in hard times, and a perfect hour of well-tuned soliloquies. It’s hard to fault Regan for soft pedalling on the woe and politics, when she’s finally got a hit on her hands. That girl deserves a break and a stable home. Then she should write the latent howl of fury that will terrify pensioners, horses, MPs and theatre reviewers.
16 Postcodes is at until 8th March 2026,King’s Head Theatre
Reviewer: Stewart Who?
Reviewed: 27th February 2026
North West End UK Rating:
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