WILL STONE fact-checks the colourful life of Ozzy Osbourne
Rutherford and Son, National Theatre London
Contemporary parallels abound in a late Edwardian drama of an industrial oligarch on the rocks
Ruthless: Roger Allam as John Rutherford
[Johan Persson] 
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
IN THE same week that British Steel was sabotaged by ruthless greed, this revival of Githa Sowerby’s 1912 play Rutherford and Son couldn’t be more timely.
Unlike the shady vultures behind that recent wrecking, here we get a personal portrait of the cold-hearted tyranny of John Rutherford (Roger Allam), whose third-generation Tyneside glassmaking business is beginning to crumble at the same time as his familial relations.
His three long-suffering children — Janet (Justine Mitchell), John Jnr (Sam Troughton) and Richard (Harry Hepple) — have spent their lives tiptoeing around “the Guv’nor” in a house with “not a scrape of love” in it. Janet cowers into a corner as he dresses down John Jnr, while the other women — his sister Ann (Barbara Marten) and daughter-in-law Mary (Anjana Vasan) — remain totally mute in his presence.
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