Review: Glorious Exploits, by Ferdia Lennon
Holt, 2024. 304 pp. $27

It’s 412 BCE, and the tide has turned against Athens in the Peloponnesian War, while the city of Syracuse, Sicily, is rising. Gelon and Lampo, two out-of-work Syracusan potters, bring meager rations to the quarry where hundreds of Athenian prisoners-of-war are dying in shackles. Few Syracusans even know; fewer care.

But of all things, Gelon admires Euripides, and he sees in the prisoners a chance to realize an old dream. He knows he’ll never visit Athens, never attend the theater there and witness the drama that moves him. Why not mount a production of Medea, one of the master’s greatest works? Surely, some of the prisoners know the play, and a few are even rumored to be actors.

Lampo thinks Gelon is crazy, but that’s nothing new. They’ve been friends since boyhood, so he’s used to hearing hare-brained ideas. But he also knows that once his buddy settles on a scheme, there’s no stopping him. Reluctantly, he agrees to help direct the play.

What follows is at once madcap, unpredictable, poignant, hilarious, and deeply powerful. The production changes anyone who comes in contact with it, whether the actors, the two “directors,” spectators, and crew, which includes a group of children who latch onto Gelon.

After all, when doomed men perform a tragedy about pride and betrayal, greed and downfall, the stark choices the characters make when they have nothing left to lose makes you think. This is no ordinary play, no ordinary setting.

Back in the Thirties, Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland made several movies in which he says, “Hey, kids, let’s put on a show!” to raise money for a worthy cause. Lennon has adopted that trope and given it an entirely different force and context, with remarkable results.

Along the way, he introduces several nice touches. Since Gelon lost his only child to untimely death, he’s happy to involve the tag-along kids, which in itself brings about a surprise or two, but also contrasts with the story on stage, in which Medea kills her children to take revenge on Jason, who betrayed her. Then too, the play is today considered an early expression of feminism in Western literature—what happens between men and women, and how women get the worst of it, a theme that runs through the novel.

That emerges, in part, with Lampo. Illiterate, humble, yearning for love and a smidgen of prosperity, he comes to embrace his role as a theatrical director with both hands. His portrayal is at once a satire on the profession—I laughed out loud—and a reminder how thrilling it can be to play a larger part than everyday drama grants.

Also true to life, Lampo winds up believing in that role a little too much. Nevertheless, in his false greatness, he rises to a step he never would have taken otherwise: he sets out to woo a beautiful slave, Lyra, hoping to buy her freedom and marry her. Naturally, he has no clue what he’s doing.

Further, with money in his pocket for the first time—the directors find a generous producer—he discovers how differently people treat him when he wears expensive clothes and flashes a fat purse. He’s no longer the out-of-work ne’er-do-well but a man to whom merchants and tavern keepers say, “Yes, sir; right away, sir.”

I enjoy good stories about the theater, and Glorious Exploits is that, a love letter to make-believe. When the directors visit the best scene shop in town to order props, costumes, masks, and backdrops, Lampo gets a lesson in stage artifice. The building is four stories, but:

You can’t see the real walls, ’cause they’re covered with scene paintings from different plays. To my right must be Olympus—rolling clouds and gorgeous sunbeams thick and gold as honey. To the left are the battlements of some citadel, probably Troy, blood streaks on the limewashed brick like gashes in pale skin, and tiny archers in the towers. It’s so well done, I’m nervous walking past it, like if I don’t leg it, I’ll go the way of Achilles. Straight ahead is the best scene of all: Hades. The river Styx to be exact, the water green and trembling with faces and limbs rising.

Lennon tells his story in modern Irish slang, which takes getting used to, but which eventually feels natural. The language is profane, sharp, and frequently funny.

The storytelling takes the reader through twists and turns, many of which are unexpected, some of which are heart-stopping. I heartily recommend Glorious Exploits, which has much to say about our times, even though it’s set 2500 years ago. It’s a marvelously imaginative novel, one that takes a remarkable premise and expands on it in several directions.

Disclaimer: I obtained my reading copy of this book through my work for Historical Novels Review, in which this review appears in shorter, different form.