I did an interview about the new play 'Achill Sound' on CRC FM with our Director Kenn McLaughlin on Monday and I think we did okay. Anne-Marie Gibbons eased us along, with her reassuring smile and her firm hand on the tiller, and we got through in one piece. Afterward, chatting to Kenn, we both mused as to whether I should be saying just a little more about the play. What it is, what it seeks to do, and where it came from. That kind of thing. It’s a point worth considering.
Up until now, I’ve largely stuck to the party line that I wrote
for myself, not wishing to spoil the manner in which the play’s narrative unfolds.
My party line, in case you haven’t seen it already, goes something like this:
“Elaine, an interviewer for a national study in rural
isolation, spends her days visiting farms in deepest Mayo. In one remote
location, she meets someone who may change her life forever.”
And, yes, now that I look at it again, I think maybe I should say a little more. Not too much, but a little. So here goes:
Things often seem to come about by a confluence of thoughts
and circumstances, don’t they? One of
the circumstances that lead to Achill Sound having its first ever
performance at The Linenhall Arts Centre on 1st October was a random conversation that dates back to this exact time last year.
We were deep in rehearsals for ‘A Sort of Whodunnit’ and I was sitting one afternoon with Matthew Largent and we were agreeing that we would both love to do a thriller on the stage. A real old fashioned ‘hide-behind-your-hand’ thrill-ride of a play. And I remember saying out loud to him, “I think I have one,” and that was that.
Fast forward to a coffee shop in early December 2025 and
Director Kenn McLaughlin, Actor Eamon Smith and me found ourselves ensconced
in a Pulp Fiction style coffee shop booth discussing all things theatre and
what we might endeavour to do together under our new umbrella name of Big Splash Productions. I said I had a play that might work for us and asked for the
Christmas period to work it up and polish it and try to make it right. They
agreed and off I went to set to work on rewriting that play.
That play was most definitely not Achill
Sound.
January arrived. Time for the ‘Big Splash Trio’ to reconvene
and assess the rewritten script… except that’s when a little lightening struck
in my life and sent me straight to hospital and thence to a rehab centre. It’s
all in the blog. Read back if you’re bothered.
It was well into March before I was back on my feet and able
to slip back into the Pulp Fiction booth with the guys. What a good day that was!
I had emailed them the play script and, here’s the thing, as I was sending it off, a conversation seemed to echo in my head. A chat about thrillers and how it would
be so cool to try and do one.
‘Achill Sound’ already existed as a fledgling script that I had written three years previously. I had quietly submitted it to the annual Irish Drama League of Ireland script competition and had quietly got a highly commended mention which meant I hadn’t won anything but it was cool all the same. I looked it up today and the email I got said the play was found to be, "... thoroughly entertaining with an astute balance between comedy and dramatic tension.” Cool. As I tend to do, I put the script in a metaphorical drawer and largely forgot about it.
But now, as I emailed this different script to Eamon and Kenn, and with Matthew’s conversation echoing in my brain, I pulled up the old ‘Achill Sound’ script and, in an impulsive moment, sent that one off too.
The next coffee booth
session was kind to the new script, enthusiastic even, but the fun, the vibe,
the force, was all with ‘Achill Sound’ and what it might become and where it might
go. And so began a rare and welcome experience for me; a constructive script
development collaboration. Suggestions were made, tentatively at first but then
with more momentum. Could we do this? Could we try that? Over several meetings, the script grew and
the characters woke up and started thinking for themselves. The fledgling play
grew small wings and started to think about a maiden flight. Then, when Eamon
agreed to take on the central male part and Kenn agreed to direct the thing, it remained
only to assemble a cohort of friends in drama and in life and see if they would
might come along for the ride. Which they did. The only lingering cloud is that there was no
part for Matthew in it, even though the initial germ conversation
had happened with him. With a little luck, I may get to reconvene with him soon in some new dramatic
endeavour.
Grand, Ken. But weren’t you going to tell us a bit more of
what the play is actually about?
I did kind-of suggest that I was going to do that, didn’t I?
Well…
But that stuff is all in the shadows, lurking in the background.
Primarily, Achill Sound aims to be exactly what it says on the tin – a ‘comedy thriller’. It’s a rarified world, the ‘comedy thriller’, and even more so in the theatre. In film, one could perhaps point to Coen Brothers movies like 'Fargo' or 'Blood Simple'. Stories that are dark but which retain their dark humour throughout. One theatre example that springs to mind is ‘Wait Until Dark’, which was also made into a striking little movie with Audrey Hepburn.
Elaine, the central character, is wounded and struggling and Giles, who she will meet out in the wilds of Mayo, is unpredictable and potentially dangerous. Their encounter will be a cat-and-mouse game in the tradition of all those beloved thrillers that have gone before.
The genesis of the play lies firmly with my lovely wife, Patricia. For a number of years she travelled the rural roads, collecting data for TILDA - the National Longitudinal Study in Aging. On her travels, she met all kinds of lovely and wonderful people. Thankfully, she didn't meet a Giles, but the niggling worry of that (on my part at least) was a primary driver for this play.
Can we pull it off? Will it all work? Who on Earth knows? Isn’t
this why we make and attend theatre? The risk, the high-wire act of it all. This little
drama has never been done before anywhere. Who knows what will happen and how
it will turn out? Certainly not me. We'll turn up on the night, well prepared and eager, and we'll see how
it all goes.
People ask me, “Why is it called ‘Achill Sound’” You got
this far in the post. There’s only probably two of you left out there reading
this. So I’ll tell you, shall I?
There are actually two reasons.
The first is that I’ve always wanted to write a script with the name of a place as a title. Think of ‘Miller’s Crossing’, ‘Mulholland Drive’, ‘Mystic River’, ‘Casablanca’. It’s a noble tradition. And second? Well, second, I always thought that the place name on my play could be nowhere else but Achill Sound.
And now you know as much as I do.
Come along, maybe, and see the rest for yourself.
