WILL STONE fact-checks the colourful life of Ozzy Osbourne
Towering Rylance at the heart of Dr Semmelweis
SIMON PARSONS recommends a production about a pioneering 19th-century Hungarian doctor that reverberates with contemporary relevance
A string quartet and dancers representing the lost women troubling Semmelweis's thoughts, haunt both the stage and the auditorium
[Geraint Lewis] 
JAMES CROSSLEY applauds a lucid biography of the German radical preacher who reemerged as a hero in the GDR
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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
Dr Semmelweis
Bristol Old Vic
THE prescient seeds for this thought-provoking and stylish production were sown before the Covid pandemic started and its development has been shaped by the collaborative response enforced by the ensuing restrictions.
Mark Rylance and Stephen Brown have resurrected the largely unknown life of a 19th-century Hungarian doctor who was a pioneer of antiseptic procedures and became known as the saviour of mothers.
Working in the Vienna General Hospital, Ignaz Semmelweis realised that the increasing number of deaths in the maternity ward were related to doctors moving directly from autopsies to obstetrics carrying infections with them.
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