WILL STONE fact-checks the colourful life of Ozzy Osbourne
Different but the same
GORDON PARSONS sees an imagined confrontation between Queen Elizabeth I and the jailed Mary Queen of Scots which reveals them as equally confined by personal and political traumas
Juliet Stevenson (centre)
[Manuel Harlan] 
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
Mary Stuart
Duke of York Theatre, London
WE ARE all prisoners of our own personalities and of history and no-one understood this better than Friedrich Schiller, widely regarded as Germany’s Shakespeare.
His epic historical drama Mary Stuart, transferred from the Almeida theatre to the West End, focuses on the tragic conflict between the Catholic Mary Queen of Scots and England’s Protestant Queen Elizabeth.
The complex family web of the Tudors left Mary with a valid claim to the English crown in the event of Elizabeth’s death and was consequently a rallying point for Catholic dissidents.
More from this author
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
