Anyone who believes in theatre as a passionate, living, chaotic, daring business - and particularly all those who know that the best theatre is often produced in the so-called Fringe, well away from the smug confines of fully subsidised state theatre - should race out and buy this lively collage. Since it began in 1972, more than 200 new writers have had their work premiered in this tiny West London theatre above a pub, among them Ireland's Billy Roche, whose A Handful of Stars dominated the 1988 season there and within a year was followed by one of the finest contemporary Irish plays, Poor Beast in the Rain. In 1992 The Bush's production of The Wexford Trilogy was nominated for the Laurence Olivier Award and won the Observer Kenneth Tynan Award for Outstanding Achievement. Work by Sebastian Barry, Declan Hughes and Conor McPherson have been produced there, as was Enda Walsh's Disco Pigs earlier this year. Here, Simon Callow, Victoria Woods and others express their appreciation and fondness in anecdotal articles.
