WILL STONE fact-checks the colourful life of Ozzy Osbourne
Universal questions
MARY CONWAY recommends a play which enthrallingly explores the limits of human consciousness
Scary stairs: Chloe Langford's set for John
[Stephen Cumminskey] 
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
John
National Theatre, London
BY ANY standards, Annie Baker’s John is an astonishing play. Imaginative, free-thinking and anarchic, in the hands of James Macdonald at the National, it's totally captivating.
Its premise, you could argue, is that the universe has its own spiritual life and that all matter, breathing and inanimate, is possessed of a soul.
As a result, human life is a tiny presence in an unimaginably complex reality and human beings, far from possessing knowledge and power and superiority, struggle with an individual isolation and irrationality that engenders madness. At least, that’s my understanding.
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