Simon Callow in Juvenalia @ Assembly Hall

In his latest Fringe production, Simon Callow introduces his audience to classical truths such as ‘women like big cocks’ and ‘old age turns smooth skin to scaly hide’ and the male member to a ‘limp and shrivelled object.’ The ancients have a lot of bawdy wisdom to offer – see Catullus – but why this particular blend of Juvenal’s writings has to be performed in 2014 Edinburgh is rather mystifying.

Tuxedo clad Callow, microphone loosely in hand, performs as an old French cabaret comedian, without the advantages of having written his own material or being funny. Him and Juvenal lament the decline of Justice and Chastity, but apart from the occasional sound effect of modern Roman traffic (Vespa scooters, presumably) this version does little to make the staid lament relevant to residents of the present.

Juvenal is as delightfully obsessed with body humour as the next Roman, and Callow has rivers of vomit oozing across terazzos, is outraged by women’s ever moist groins, the stink of whorehouses and the horrific size of some people’s orifices. This sort of material is rather wonderful when painstakingly translated by a pack of 15-year-olds in Latin class, but as a stand-alone performance it is simply insufficient.