WILL STONE fact-checks the colourful life of Ozzy Osbourne
Worthy cause derailed by lack of dramatic momentum
A tick-box approach to real concerns and nodding to the crowd disappoint, writes MARY CONWAY
Nick King and Charlotte Beaumont in Fair Play
[Ali Wright] 
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
Fair Play
Bush Theatre
FAIR Play, the new work by Ella Road famed for her success with The Phlebotomist, takes us into a very current, but rarely explored, world of top-class athletics. Two young women, Ann and Sophie, meet in training, bond and spur each other on, only to see their burgeoning prowess – and with it their relationship – sabotaged by the unfairness of life and factors beyond their control.
It exposes the important role of luck as well as graft in competitive activity.
The play is performed in the round; the stage is adorned with fitness apparatus; the floor is a running track, and much of the early part of the action involves the two characters in brief demonstrations of fitness training and the act of running.
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MARY CONWAY is blown away by a flawless production of Lynn Nottage’s exquisite tragedy
MARY CONWAY revels in the Irish American language and dense melancholy of O’Neill’s last and little-known play
MARY CONWAY recommends a play that some will find more discursive than eventful but one in which the characters glow
