Monaghan actor channels personal loss into chilling radio tale

MONAGHAN writer and actor Declan Reynolds has channelled personal loss into a haunting audio drama pairing local storytelling with international star power.

Reynolds, who began with Monaghan Youth Theatre, is one of the creative forces behind Three Raps on the Buoy, a tense radio play shaped by grief, memory, lockdown sea-swimming and buried secrets.

The drama began as a 300-word Galway Pitch by Reynolds and filmmaker Glenn McQuaid, creator of the Tales from Beyond the Pale digital radio series. McQuaid, an avid sea swimmer, first imagined “two men swimming during Covid”.

During plot development, Reynolds suggested the darker twist: “What if one of the characters was actually responsible for the other person’s bereavement or death?”

Declan, who wrote the original story, which was later turned into a radio play by his long-term collaborator Glenn. The result is dedicated to both their fathers. Declan’s father Patsy died when he was 16 going on 17. Patsy worked with the council and was late one evening, when just outside the family home, his motorbike was hit by a car. Reynolds referred to it as “the day my childhood ended”.

“I think of my dad and miss him every day,” he said.

That grief broke through during recording. “It’s a tribute to him in some respects and also to Glenn’s father, Charlie. At the end of the recording, I just started crying,” Reynolds said.

McQuaid told him it was “a different type of cry… like a young boy’s cry” and, with permission, used it in the final version. The play got its name from McQuaid rapping the buoy three times in memory of his father every time he goes sea swimming.

The pair entered RTÉ’s Storyland, where they were shortlisted and interviewed. Reynolds thinks the Covid angle “maybe was a turn off” so soon after lockdown, but that led to one character becoming American and that opened the door to a screen legend.

Ron Perlman, known for Beauty and the Beast, Hellboy and Sons of Anarchy, had worked with McQuaid previously. Reynolds was stunned: “As soon as he started speaking, I got goosebumps.” Perlman, he said, “just was able to switch it on.”

Ashley Bell, of The Last Exorcism films, also features as the daughter. “Just to hear the words being brought to life with a human voice was magical,” Reynolds said. “I was pinching myself.” Declan himself delivered an authentic and engaging vocal performance.

Set around open-water swimming off the Irish coast, the piece uses sound as much as speech to unnerve. Reynolds feels that the sea lends itself well to the horror/thriller genre: “Ireland looks so beautiful from the sea, but out there you just feel so vulnerable.

“When the audience listens to (the play) and closes their eyes, they put themselves in the water,” he said. Even the buoy sounds “like church bells … ominous of things to come”.

Three Raps on the Buoy is available through Tales Beyond the Pale on Spotify and Apple Music, with YouTube expected to follow. Reynolds advises using earphones “to get all the soundscapes of the water”.

He encouraged people to listen and share it if they enjoy it. Plans are also afoot to develop the story into a feature film, and Reynolds says he would love to be involved.