Rome Sweet Rome is a product of the Q Brothers Collective (who previously gave us hip-hop versions of A Christmas Carol and Othello: The Remix), not to be confused with the Q Continuum, an immortal group that has been represented in over 20 episodes of various Star Trek series and which, to my knowledge, has never hipped, hopped or put on any kind of musical.

I divided the show into three parts. The beginning didn’t do much for me, even though, fortunately, I had a seat with an unobstructed view of the open-captioning screen so that I could at least understand what was going on.

I loved the middle of the show. I wish I could tell you how much of the entire production that encompassed, but the program does not include any scene or song identifiers.

I can tell you that my enjoyment ratcheted up considerably upon the rendering of the song I Need a Sandwich, which played off that part of the plot that involved a ban on bread by the Roman dictator, who preferred that his subjects ate the salad named after him.

As if it were not enough to borrow from Shakespeare, the cast followed the food frenzy with a couple dance excerpts that enjoyably sounded and looked suspiciously like Monster Mash and Thriller, apropos as Julius Caesar had been told to beware, not the Ides of March, but rather Halloween.

After (spoiler alert) he brutally met his demise at the holiday party, the show went downhill for both Julius and me, for me when it got preachy near the end. I prefer subtlety. I came for entertainment, or possibly an all-powerful alien race, not a political rally.