Ed O’Meara : ”A Complete and Comprehensive History of the Roman Empire in Under an Hour. With Jokes.”
Bannerman’s Bar: 13:45pm daily
Multiple-time festival visitor, Ed O’Meara, serves up a potted Roman history lesson splattered with quips, funny observations and a range of ironic connections to today’s society, some of which are unerringly accurate.
After a slightly nervy start (it was the first gig of this festival season), Ed quickly got into his historical stride with a reminder of Romulus, Remus, fratricide and touch of bestiality thrown-in for good humoured measure.
References to Rome’s early open door policy, intermingled with ‘ancient sexism’ and Sabine women, leave the door wide open for a swathe of up date satirical and witty observations, (Ed’s early show edginess is now disappearing!). Being himself a ‘bearded wonder’ Ed soon manages to comically offend most of the non-bearded audience but with a cheeky grin and ‘crystal blue eyes’ that the ladies yearn to look into (a comment from the row behind), Ed soon has the audience back on his side, if not of the Romans themselves.
A whirlwind drive through centuries of Roman culture, mayhem, murder, political structure and career suicides leave all with a decent timeline of major events as well as noting a number of spectacular personality flaws and foibles from those ‘Emperors’ in charge of it all.
Ed manages to include entertaining references to Alexander the Great, Carthage, Etruscans (and their pottery exploits), plus a host of notable battles and match them a number of modern day equivalents in a welcome laconic and ironic manner. Certainly this Reviewer did not know the Pretorian Guard had such an interesting business model.
If you like the idea of ancient history blended with entertaining jokes and idioms, this one’s for you. 3.5 out of 5
Submitted by James Stevenson
