Book review:  Classical framework for staging of plays against backdrop of war

Ferdia Lennon's 'Glorious Exploits', which took seven years to write, is a tragicomedy with cathartic elements

Ferdia Lennon: Beguiling writing style vividly visual in its effect. Picture: Conor Horgan

• Glorious Exploits 
• Ferdia Lennon 
• Fig Tree, €14.99 

This unusual and highly engaging debut novel from an Irish-Libyan graduate of history and classics, who also has a masters in prose fiction from the University of East Anglia, in England, is a curious mixture of classical references and modern day profane speech.

Set in Syracuse in Sicily in 412 BC, the exploits of two unemployed potters, Lampo and Gelon, are relayed with Lampo, a somewhat limited man, as the narrator. However, Lampo grows emotionally and spiritually as the tale progresses while Gelon is the more thoughtful one from the start.

The pair, best friends since childhood, come up with an audacious plan, namely to stage Medea as well as The Trojan Women starring Athenian prisoners following their disastrous invasion of Sicily. 

For Gelon, who is “mad for Euripides”, it’s a natural progression from giving the quarry-bound and chained Athenians food and water in exchange for the recitation of lines from the Greek playwright.

The quarry the two friends have been frequenting is a like a huge Athenian amphitheatre. The captive Athenians, skeletal due to measly food rations, are unlikely contenders for the stage but they will do anything for extra scraps of food.

Apart from a few starring actors, the Athenian cast is described en masse as withering away, trying to clutch at survival but in such dire straits that they could easily succumb to oblivion. 

The amateur actors are not the only ones that are miserable. Lampo describes Gelon as seeing the world “as if it’s filtered through smoke, no brightness to anything”.

In other words, he is somewhat depressed but staging Medea and the latest play be Euripides gives him a sense of purpose even though it’s an arduous task.

“It’s poetry we’re doing,” Gelon whispers to Lampo. “It wouldn’t mean a thing if it were easy.” He doesn’t hate the Athenians. He loves them “in some small way because he loves their theatre”.

Ferdia Lennon’s beguiling writing style is often vividly visual in its effect. When the two boyos (or directors, as they call themselves) approach a ship to try and flog soldiers’ armour to the merchant on board to finance their production, they are met by a hostile man who behaves like a gatekeeper, wondering what they want. 

He is described as a “tall sinewy fellow with a jagged scar like a smile across his throat”. As it turns out, the merchant buys the equipment and when he speaks to Gelon, he is in philosophical mode. 

He asks him “are our lives governed by divine order or is there only this?” Gelon expresses his belief that there is a reason for everything: “Even if the gods don’t know what they’re doing, something does.”

Gelon and Lampo succeed in putting on the plays despite being accused of being traitors by some Syracusans. But it’s what happens after the shows that is by far the most dramatic event.

In the meantime, Lampo, who used to care for very little beyond his next jug of wine, has fallen for Lyra, a slave girl working in a bar. But he needs to come up with money to buy her freedom from the owner.

Lampo and Gelon are notorious in their city for having put on the plays. However, Lampo reflects that while he always wanted to be famous, he wishes he could go back to what he was. But he has grown and matured, though under a metaphorical spotlight. 

This novel, which took seven years to write, is a tragicomedy with cathartic elements. It’s quite an accomplishment for a writer whose career seems set to soar.