Is Chris Bush the busiest playwright in Britain? When she walked into the Crucible Theatre in Sheffield last month, her name was practically wallpaper. On the poster for the current season, there were three shows to her name: her boundary-pushing new project Rock/Paper/Scissors, the touring production of her musical Fantastically Great Women Who Changed The World and the return of Standing at the Sky’s Edge, another musical with Richard Hawley, next Christmas. The last spot went to a production of Much Ado About Nothing. Bush quips: “Who wrote that? Nobody knows.”
Bush has been an in-demand playwright and artistic director since her 2007 runaway Edinburgh Fringe hit Tony! The Blair Musical (not to be confused with Harry Hill’s similarly titled but inferior show). This, however, is certainly her busiest work period to date. In April, the 35-year-old opened a version of Jane Eyre in Scarborough, while Fantastically Great Women tours the country. Her play Hungry for Paines Plough will be debuting at Soho Theatre in July, and she’s reimagined Brecht’s The Caucasian Chalk Circle as The Doncastrian Chalk Circle in collaboration with the National Theatre later this summer. And I thought my Love Island viewing schedule was frantic.
