WILL STONE fact-checks the colourful life of Ozzy Osbourne
By far the best Bard production of the year
An ideal balance between comedy and gravity in riveting Shakespeare reinvention, suggests MAYER WAKEFIELD
Hattie Ladbury as Duke and Ashley Zhangazha as Angelo
[Helen Murray] 
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
Measure for Measure
Sam Wanamaker Playhouse
ABUSE of power. Check. Corruption. Check. Predatory male behaviour. Check. Draconian measures. Check. A sprinkle of pantomime. Check.
Blanche McIntyre’s Measure for Measure couldn’t be timelier. But rather than locate it in the here and now she’s transposed Shakespeare’s quintessential “problem play” into the 1970s, with James Cotterill’s design finding a happy medium between Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy and Austin Powers.
There is a sneaky reference to the three-day week as the electronic lighting flickers until the candles which usually light the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse take over. It’s the first of many clever devices which characterise this perceptive production.
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