Mystery Bush Bundle

Four books for a fiver (worth up to £40!)

Get four playtexts in a mystery bundle for just a fiver. You never know what you might get! Featuring plays by writers from across our history. Get a copy of a hit play you love, or discover a new story you've never heard of.

Close-Up Magic (Paperback)

40 Years at the Bush Theatre

Open this book and you will hold in your hands a living history of a small theatre and its mammoth impact, a book which traces the treacherous and thrilling path through famine, feast and fire. It never should have worked: a makeshift theatre about a pub far west of the West End in the dark days of the early 1970s, with no funding beyond its (initially) meagre box office takings. It certainly never should have kick-started the careers of the likes of Catherine Johnson or Julie Walters, Conor McPherson or Simon Callow. It shouldn’t have worked. And yet it did.

The Origins of the Bush Theatre, for those who know it, have entered into the realms of the mythical: Brian McDermott standing on a beer crate at Speakers’ Corner flogging the latest show; the battles against de facto censorship; the struggles for survival; and most importantly, setting the tone for the future, those first few productions – wild, brilliant magnets of controversy – 90-minute packets of theatre at its best. This book captures it all and beyond: the guts, the gore and the glory of 40 years at the Bush.

A Carpet, a Pony and a Monkey

by Mike Packer

Euro 2000: the European Football Championships. Millionaire ticket tout Baz has blown it all on dot.com shares, so it's off to Belgium with his reluctant sidekick Tosser to get rid of three hundred tickets for the England v. Germany game on a bunch of pissed-up Geordies.

F*ck the Polar Bears

by Tanya Ronder

A raucous new play about a family who have the world at their feet. Will they stamp all over it?

Gordon and Serena have worked hard to get where they are. He’s on the verge of a massive promotion at an energy giant. She’s preparing for a move into the house of their dreams. The family appear to be cooking on gas.

But behind their perfect front door, light bulbs are blowing, the drains keep blocking, and a phone inexplicably refuses to charge. Not to mention that daughter Rachel’s adored toy polar bear is nowhere to be found.

As Gordon chases the spectres behind these mysterious events, he spirals out of control and the family are forced to ask whether the life they desire is worth its cost.

I Caught Crabs in Walberswick

by Joel Horwood

Wheeler is a high-flying comprehensive kid destined for university, while football-mad Fitz is struggling to cope with his dysfunctional father and his schoolwork. They live in Walberswick, a sleepy Suffolk village best known, only known, for hosting the British Open Crabbing Championship.Set on a sweltering summer's day on the eve of their last GCSE exam, they are ambushed by Dani, the fittest (and poshest) girl on the beach. So begins a crazy twenty-four hours that will change the lives of the three sixteen-year-olds for ever.Joel Horwood's exhilarating new play presents the realities of rural life from a teenager's perspective.

Kingfisher Blue

by Lin Coghlan

'Gives a voice to those whose lives are constantly ignored and devalued.'-Guardian

Four London lads, doing their best to keep afloat, have big plans for getting on; but things take a turn for the worse when one of their scams dangerously backfires. An urban tale of stuffed weasels, avocado sandwiches and dreams of escape.

Little Platoons

by Steve Waters

A group of West London parents are driven by desperation to take the new government up on their offer and start their own ‘free school’. They want to create an education that their children will enjoy rather than endure. But as they find their lives given over to a disturbing version of the Big Society, their fervour turns to panic.

Free schools are getting ready to transform from policy idea to classroom reality. But what do we know about them?
This dark new comedy takes the pulse of Coalition Britain, by exploring what the retreat of the state and the growth of people power might actually mean. Moving from satiric comedy to poignant family drama, it asks why we’re all so obsessed with education and what happens when we get what we wish for.

Mammals

by Amelia Bullmore

I've had it with telling. I never want to be told anything either. Not even the time?

Jane and Kev don't have secrets, there's no room for them. Their children take up all the space. Dirty laundry and weekend guests just have to be squeezed in. But when Kev comes home from a business trip with something on his mind he starts a confessional chain reaction, which has shattering consequences.

My Romantic History

by DC Jackson

“If you haven’t met someone by the time you graduate, you’re going to marry some idiot from your work. It’s that simple. Do you know how they get animals to breed in captivity? They put them in the same cage.”

Office romances are tricky. One moment you’re colleagues, then a quick grope after Friday night drinks and suddenly you’re in a relationship. When Tom and Amy get together after an office social, they find themselves living in each other’s pockets. But it’s not their lack of chemistry that’s the problem: it’s that neither of them can quite get over their childhood sweethearts.

Pump Girl

by Abbie Spallen

There's one in every town, and they call her the Pumpgirl. She works in the garage, changes the oil and thinks she's one of the lads. She's sweet on 'No-helmet' Hammy, but he loves no-one but himself. He's out all night with his racing boys, whilst wife Sinead's off on a joyride of her own, with an ache that's about to be cured. A turbo charged race through the diesel fumes and country music of the Armagh badlands.

Abbie Spallen's explosively comic new play takes us deep into the unspoken thoughts and darkest desires of three lives destined to collide. The Bush Theatre's world premiere production of Pumpgirl opened at the Traverse Theatre, in the 2006 Edinburgh Fringe Festival.

Straight

by DC Moore

Lewis and Waldorf were inseparable at university. Ten years on and a lot has changed. In the middle of a drunken night out, they make a bet that will take their friendship to whole new level.

Adapted for the stage by award-winning writer DC Moore and directed by Richard Wilson, this is the world première of Straight, a razor-sharp new comedy.

You’ll never look at your best friend in the same way again…

Based on the motion picture Humpday, written & directed by Lynn Shelton. Contains adult content and scenes of a sexual nature.