WILL STONE fact-checks the colourful life of Ozzy Osbourne
Cyrano de Bergerac, The Playhouse London
Star vehicle with James McAvoy at the helm destined for box-office bonanza
CHARISMATIC: James McAvoy
[Marc Brenner] 
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
JAMES McAVOY teams up once again with director Jamie Lloyd for another star vehicle in Edmond Rostand’s universally loved story about Cyrano de Bergerac, the man who is brilliant with language and the imagination but, in the real world, disfigured by a monstrous nose.
Cyrano loves Roxane to distraction but he is forced to watch her fall for traditional good-looker, Christian. While she is thrilled by poetry and romantic expression and craves exquisite love letters, Christian is useless with words and out of his depth.
So Cyrano steps in and writes a barrage of letters, purportedly from Christian, but actually issuing from the depths of his own crazed passion. Which one does Roxane truly love — the good-looker or the man who shares his heart and soul with her through language? It's a universal predicament.
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MARY CONWAY is blown away by a flawless production of Lynn Nottage’s exquisite tragedy
MARY CONWAY revels in the Irish American language and dense melancholy of O’Neill’s last and little-known play
MARY CONWAY recommends a play that some will find more discursive than eventful but one in which the characters glow
