‘I’d watch you eat. I’d eat you up. Look at you. You get it, don’t you? You’re real.’
Lori is a professional chef. Bex waits on tables to make ends meet. One night together in a walk-in fridge and it’s the beginning of something beautiful.
Lori has big plans, while Bex is struggling. If we are what we eat, then Bex is in real trouble. It’s not her fault – the system is rigged. No one on minimum wage and zero hours has the headspace to make their own yoghurt.
Chris Bush’s Hungry is a play about food, love, class and grief in a world where there’s little left to savour. It was premiered in July 2021 in Paines Plough’s the Roundabout, directed by Katie Posner, as a co-production between Paines Plough and Belgrade Theatre as part of Coventry City of Culture 2021, before touring the UK.
‘One of the UK’s most exciting young playwrights’ The Stage
‘A writer of great wit and empathy’ The Times
‘Sensitive, confronting and seriously funny… smart writing… Like the best theatre, Hungry is reflective and thought-provoking – and a call for change’
— The Stage
‘Chris Bush’s clever two-hander is a thoughtful exploration of attitudes to what we eat’
— Guardian
‘Thought-provoking and highly entertaining’
— British Theatre Guide
‘Powerful and emotive… a multilayered tale of bittersweet love and class entrenchment’
— Evening Standard
‘Quite simply, I loved everything about this play… blisteringly funny… a great evening of entertainment’
— LondonTheatre1
‘The crisp, snappy dialogue is peppered with acute observational one-liners and unwavering social awareness, reconfirming Bush as one of our greatest, most relevant contemporary playwrights’
— Broadway World
‘Provocative and compellingly written…It seems that [Chris] Bush is competing only with the likes of Mike Bartlett to be Britain’s most programmed playwright’
— The Upcoming
