WILL STONE fact-checks the colourful life of Ozzy Osbourne
Stripped right back production mesmerises
PAUL FOLEY recommends what he considers the best staging he has ever ween of the Tennessee Williams classic
MASTERCLASS IN ACTING: (L to R) Eloka Ivo as Jim, Rhiannon Clements as Laura and Geraldine Somerville as Amanda
[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
The Glass Menagerie
Royal Exchange Theatre Manchester
IF ONLY Tennessee Williams could have seen this magnificent production of The Glass Menagerie he would have died a happy man.
In 2019 Atri Banerjee was a trainee director and staged a fine Hobson’s Choice at the Royal Exchange. With this production he has grown into a mature, confident director with immense skill and a great vision.
Williams’s play premiered in 1944 but is set in the ’30s. Poverty, tension and desperation permeate the Wingfield family. The play is narrated by the son Tom, a young man full of pent-up frustration.
Angry at his role as the family breadwinner, angry at an overbearing mother, angry at his thwarted ambition to be a writer. Overlying this anger is his love for and guilt about his sister Laura who is a disturbed and fragile young woman.
In some director’s hands The Glass Menagerie can become overbearing and complex but Banerjee has the foresight to strip it right back, leaving Williams’s beautiful poetic language to his excellent cast.
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