WILL STONE fact-checks the colourful life of Ozzy Osbourne
Imperial decline
An RSC adaptation of Robert Harris's novels about power politics in ancient Rome loses something in translation from page to stage, says GORDON PARSONS
Power play: Imperium Part II
[Ikin Yum] 
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
Imperium Parts I and II
The Swan Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon
MIKE POULTON, adapter of Robert Harris’s trilogy of novels narrating the life of the great Roman orator Cicero, clearly recognises the problems anyone dramatising a novel has to cope with.
There's not only often the weight of plot detail involved, he's said, but also the demands on the linear narrative progression in theatre where, unlike in the novels, audiences cannot check back on incidents and characters.
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GORDON PARSONS acknowledges the authority with which Sarah Kane’s theatrical justification for suicide has resonance today
GORDON PARSONS is disappointed by an unsubtle production of this comedy of upper middle class infidelity
GORDON PARSONS joins a standing ovation for a brilliant production that fuses Shakespeare’s tragedy with Radiohead's music
GORDON PARSONS recommends a gripping account of flawed justice in the case of Pinochet and the Nazi fugitive Walther Rauff
