Bush Theatre

The Bush occupies the old Shepherd's Bush library on Uxbridge Road, W12 8LJ. Shepherd's Bush Market on the Circle and Hammersmith & City lines is closest, with Shepherd's Bush on the Central line and the Overground station a few minutes further. Buses along the Uxbridge Road stop outside. Look for the handsome Edwardian library building rather than a theatre frontage.

Yes, throughout. The main entrance is on the right-hand side of the building, reached either by four steps or by a ramp suitable for wheelchairs and buggies, through an automatic double glass door; from there every area of the building is step free. Both performance spaces are on the ground floor with level flooring — the Holloway Theatre, the main house seating between 160 and 220, and the Studio, usually around 60 to 70. A wheelchair space is reserved for every performance in the Holloway and can be booked online or by phone, and tickets for personal assistants and access companions are free. The ground-floor single-use toilet is accessible with a right-hand transfer, has its own sink and floor-to-ceiling walls, and doubles as the non-gendered facility; the main toilets on the first floor are reached by stairs or the lift. A hearing loop runs at every performance and works from any seat, with a headset on request at the box office.

Thirty minutes, and check whether your ticket is for the Holloway Theatre or the Studio — both are on the ground floor but they are separate rooms. The Studio seats only sixty or seventy, so arriving late there is conspicuous. The bar in the old library hall is a pleasant place to wait and is used by the neighbourhood as well as the audience.

None at all. The Bush is a new-writing theatre in a converted library on a west London high street, and its audience is as local and as informal as that suggests. Come as you are; nothing here calls for dressing up, though nobody minds if you do.

Not during the performance. Before it, afterwards and at the curtain call you are welcome to, and the converted library is worth a picture in its own right. The work here is almost always new, frequently a first production, and in the Studio the front row sits a few feet from the actors, so a screen during the show is impossible to overlook.