Ancient Greek Theatre: Glorious Exploits by Ferdia Lennon

Glorious Exploits by Ferdia Lennon

published 2024

& 

The Mask of Apollo by Mary Renault

published 1966

 

[Excerpt] 

[Gelon and Lampo are trying to sell armour they have found. Konin tells them who to see]

‘You might think it’s a good idea to give it all a clean and polish, but don’t. This fella’s a bit particular. Apparently, he prefers the military stuff to be left as is.’

‘You mean with the blood and other stains?’ asks Gelon.

‘Exactly,’ says Konin.

 

We’re off. Dragging the stuff as the sweat rolls down our backs in salty abundance. When we hear the sea, Gelon stops and lays out the armour and blades on some rocks, curses. We cleaned and buffered every piece on the way. It seemed common sense that a gleaming breastplate would fetch more than a filthy one…

Gelon’s taken a knife and is making a cut along his left arm. ‘Are you mad! Stop it, man.’ A bubble of dark blood forms then pops down onto the helmets, swords. More comes, falling faster till it’s almost a flow, and the blades and other pieces seem to come to life under it, and they bloom redly.

 

comments: I would not have expected to read this book.

I don’t usually go big on the publisher’s description, (and never believe in blurbs, see post here) but just this once I will give you the selling spiel:

It's 412 BC, and Athens' invasion of Sicily has failed catastrophically. Thousands of Athenian soldiers are held captive in the quarries of Syracuse, starving and dejected.

Lampo and Gelon are local potters, young men with no work and barely two obols to rub together. With not much to fill their time, they take to visiting the nearby quarry, where they discover prisoners who will, in desperation, recite lines from the plays of Euripides in return for scraps of bread and a scattering of olives.

And so an idea is born: the men will put on Medea in the quarry. A proper performance to be sung of down the ages. Because after all, you can hate the Athenians for invading your territory, but still love their poetry.

And Lampo, whose ambitions have never stretched beyond having enough coin for the next jug of wine, finds his aspirations elevated, his heart entangled and his courage tested in ways he could never have imagined.

 

Until recently I'd never heard of it, and if I had would not have read it, but a very trusted friend recommended  it, and it is brilliant.

Her description was ‘Euripides reimagined by Roddy Doyle if he'd just watched Field of Dreams…Lennon says it took him 7 years to write, so I suppose he didn't intend any comparisons with Palestine, but you couldn't help thinking how little has changed.’

So obviously I read it, and – interestingly and very rare for me – I listened to it as an audiobook on a long journey, and then read it in print I liked it so much.

The audiobook is read by the author, who is Irish-Libyan and has the most lovely accent. The story itself seems full of authentic details & very well-researched – Ferdia Lennon is classics graduate. But, at the same time, it is narrated by Lampo and is very much in the voice and manner of Dublin wideboys. (helped of course by Lennon’s voice). It may not sound promising but I can tell you it works a treat.

It is quite dark at times - the author does not hold back on the brutal nature of life, and of the losses incurred by both sides in the earlier war, and the strong feelings that remain.

But it is also very funny and lovely and a bit melancholy, just perfect.

We follow the two men as they move round the city trying to get together what they need to put on the play, and it’s  a journey, a quest, an odyssey – one minute they are dealing with dead bodies, next a quirky shopkeeper, then a terrifying foreign merchant. Sometimes they’re in the tavern, or at the market, or in the woods.

Cutting yourself to make the armour attractively bloody is the least of it. I found it mesmerising and could picture everything very clearly. I loved the two men – deeply imperfect, very different, like people you’d know and love. Lampo is the most endearing yet foolish person.

This is a description of the theatrical workshops

More robes and wooden swords and sceptres. A little ginger cat is licking at the gold paint on one of the fake crowns so that its tongue glints in its gob. The last room and the painted backdrops give way to wooden workbenches. There’s sawdust on the floor and the grey glow of chisels and files. This is the masking room, and there are three fellas in it. The heart of the operation. Ma told me they’re slaves from Libya that Alekto’s husband bought cheap when they were kids. That was ages ago, and the Libyans are getting on themselves now, their hair grey. Gas that. Once they were children chiselling Agamemnons or Athenas, their whole life in front of them, and now they’re old, still chiselling the same kings and gods, yet there can be but little life in front of them.

It's a book about the importance of art and humanity, kindness to each other, and how those things can connect…finding some beauty and heart in the rubble and horror of war.

The final two sections made me weep.

…and it seems to me a soft and delicate thing.

‘He believed the world a wounded thing that can only be healed by story.’

 

Reading this sent me back to The Mask of Apollo by Mary Renault (1966) – also about actors and plays, in classical Greece, though also roaming round and with a big Sicilian connection. It is set in the 50 years after the Lennon book – the real events in Glorious Exploits are a memory there.

I have loved this book since I was a teenager – the story of Nico the actor, the mask, the plays and performances: it enthralled and thrilled me, then and now.

And – as a child one of Nico’s first roles is in Euripides’ Women of Troy (The Trojan Women in the Lennon book):

 I do remember, though, quite clearly, playing Astyanax to his Andromache. I was turned six by then, for Astyanax has to work…My father told me the plot, and promised I should not really be thrown off the walls, in spite of all the talk about it.

This is a key scene for a child actor in Glorious Exploits too.

Every time I reread Mask of Apollo, which is every couple of years, I wonder if the magic will work again, and it always does, I get lost in the distant world.

So I have read it so many times, and now I think I will always read it with the Ferdia Lennon book too, a perfect pair.

I am also very fond of Mary Renault’s The Persian Boy, here on the blog.

Renault and Homer set me on a path of learning some very basic Ancient Greek, and a couple of posts contain my own translations from that language – Sappho here (recently resurrected), and Homer in this entry about war.

Actors rehearsing for a Greek play, NYPL.

Greek and Roman masks and actors, NYPL.

Theatrical production, also NYPL.

 

Picture of the Apollo ivory mask from the website of James Twining.