Fran Robertson

articles by Fran Robertson

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Where the US President chose to mark the 250th anniversary of the founding of his country with a cage fight, the BBC stuck to music in this…
QFWFQ, Summerhall ★★★★At first glance, an iconic post-modern novel (or, perhaps more accurately, "novel") by Italo Calvino might not seem…
Squint and you could be in 1968 - although this lot are rather better dressed and healthier than most hippies. I did see a bumper sticker “…
Joan Littlewood’s stage production of Oh! What a Lovely War was a huge success when premiered at Stratford East in 1963. Loosely based on a…
Exactly how Ronnie Wood has reached the age of 79, after decades of rock’n’roll debauchery with the Faces and the Rolling Stones and…
Up: Violin vs Football, French Institute in Scotland ★★★★★Is it theatre? Is it music, or maybe dance? Or even some kind of circus, or…
Mastodon, to those who are unaware of these US rock behemoths, fill a similar musical space to Iron Maiden or perhaps Rush, if they had…
Last year, Chineke! delivered one of the Proms’ more hard-hitting offerings, in a programme including Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 10, “50…
There can be few more cultivated ways to spend a morning than with the chamber music of Francis Poulenc. The Gallic wit that’s so evident…
The gag – and it’s about as pitch-black a gag as you could imagine – is there in the title. Three African American guys hang out, shoot the…