WILL STONE fact-checks the colourful life of Ozzy Osbourne
Brilliance at the double from Ballet Black
Excellence in action: The Suit
[Bill Cooper] 
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
The Suit + A Dream Within a Midsummer Night's Dream
Theatre Royal Stratford East/Touring
CATHY MARSTON’S inventive choreography informs the assured storytelling of Can Themba’s South African story The Suit. The first of Ballet Black’s excellent double bill, it's set to music by the Kronos Quartet.
No sooner has Philemon gone to work than his wife Matilda is joined in bed by her lover Simon. But Philemon catches them in the throes of love-making on returning for his briefcase and Simon escapes virtually naked, leaving his suit behind.
Philemon takes revenge by insisting that Matilda treat Simon’s suit as their honoured guest at all times and, with her repeated entreaties for forgiveness cruelly refused, Matilda is doomed to relentless humiliation by the suit’s constant presence in their domestic and social lives.
More from this author
CHRISTINE LINDEY welcomes a fascinating survey of the work of the communist and socialist artists who founded the AIA in the 1930s
CHRISTINE LINDEY guides us through the vivid expressionism of a significant but apolitical group of pre WWI artists in Germany
CHRISTINE LINDEY salutes an outstanding exhibition imbued with a sense of national guilt
CHRISTINE LINDEY surveys the cosmopolitan, enigmatic compositions of an idiosyncratic artist whose work speaks of mystery and exile
