WILL STONE fact-checks the colourful life of Ozzy Osbourne
Brecht's anti-war parable gets acute update from Red Ladder
PIC CAP Outstanding: Pauline McLynn and Bea Webster
[Anthony Robling] 
JAMES CROSSLEY applauds a lucid biography of the German radical preacher who reemerged as a hero in the GDR
Prizes all round: the Bard hands plaudits to the Miners Gala, OT&JC, Joe Solo, Black Sabbath’s frontman and the Lionesses
Star cartoonist JAMIE BRITTON is in awe of a graphic novel of epic proportions that explores class, religion and globalisation via the strange cultivation of Ginseng in the US Midwest
GUILLERMO THOMAS is intrigued by a history of the Middle East that demonstrates how promising post colonial beginnings were snuffed out by Western imperialist interests
MARIA DUARTE recommends the intricate study of a high-performance and highly dysfuntional German family
Mother Courage and Her Children
Albion Electric Warehouse, Leeds
IT’S hard to think of many plays better suited to a promenade staging than Mother Courage and Her Children. Bertolt Brecht’s 1941 polemic about the futility of war does, after all, follow the titular anti-hero as she travels from town to town selling wares from her canteen.
In this production, which marks Red Ladder’s 50th anniversary, the audience becomes part of her travelling wagon, part of the sea of people displaced by conflict.
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