WILL STONE fact-checks the colourful life of Ozzy Osbourne
The Provoked Wife, Swan Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon
The RSC are in assured form in a classic Restoration farce
Comic turn: Caroline Quentin as Lady Fancyfull
[Pete le May] 
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
SIR JOHN Vanbrugh is reputed to have started writing The Provoked Wife when imprisoned as a suspected British spy in the Bastille.
Back in London he finished it years later, after the 1696 success of his debut play The Relapse. That non-linear track record had no effect on his shaping of this archetypical Restoration comedy of manners, in which young men about town hunt down equally willing young women in witty sex games.
The accompanying paraphernalia of masked disguises and cuckolding of gulled husbands reflects the manners and morals of an elite strand of a London society entertained by theatrical images of itself.
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