WILL STONE fact-checks the colourful life of Ozzy Osbourne
A self-confessed epic mash up
Romeo and Juliet rehashed 30 years on is full of disparate ideas and feels like a production on steroids, writes SIMON PARSONS
Romeo and Juliet recreated 30 years on, desperate to recapture the past
[Alex 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
A Night at the Kabuki
Sadler’s Wells
A FANTASTICAL reworking of Romeo and Juliet set amongst ancient warring Japanese clans accompanied by strains of Queen’s A Night at the Opera is the self confessed epic mash up created by writer and director Hideki Noda.
The two protagonists are recreated 30 years on, desperate to recapture the past, fill in the missing pieces and alter their tragic fate, yet their frequently comic intrusions into the story of their brief love affair inevitably change nothing.
The visual spectacle with spinning beds, stunning costumes, dramatic tableaux and vast floating sheets on a stage of spinning doors set below white battlements and a cast of 26 is truly mesmerising but the overall effect before the interval where the original tale of the star-crossed lovers is rehashed is of a production on steroids. Rarely does the volume dip, movement cease or the rapid Japanese delivery ease up.
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