Skip to main content

Buffy Revamped

Royal Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh 

Four stars

 

In every generation, there is a chosen TV cult that will stand against the reality shows, sitcoms, and forces of prime time darkness. Between 1997 and 2003, that show was Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Josh Whedon’s kick-ass yarn concerning Sarah Michelle Geller’s wisecracking new girl in town Buffy Summers and her ever-morphing entourage of high school misfits. Over seven seasons, Buffy and co saw off all manner of vampires, demons and whatever else the Hellmouth beneath Sunnydale High School could throw at them in order to show that the geek really could inherit the earth. 

 

For those of us who witnessed the growing pains of Buffy, from queen nerd and slayer extraordinaire to reincarnated badass and actual saviour of the world, resurrections are welcome in any form. Judging by the Fresher's Week aged crowd who make up a sizeable proportion of the packed audience for Brendan Murphy’s comic compendium of the show’s 144 episodes in seventy minutes, the generations that followed in its wake feel much the same. 

 

Murphy adopts the persona of Spike, the punky, peroxided cockney vamp with a saucy line in patter and a hell of a crush on our favourite heroine. Spike here isn’t the louche bad boy with devil may care attitude and dubious charm as played on screen by James Marsters. As possessed by Murphy, he motormouths his way through the show’s assorted plot twists with the manic edge of Jim Carrey channelling Jason Statham by way of Rik Mayall’s people’s poet of yore. 

 

As he dons assorted wigs to introduce us to Buffy, Willow, Xander, Giles and the rest of the gang by way of assorted end of the twentieth century pop references, Murphy is quite the monster to contend with in Hamish MacDougall’s production. As has already been proven several tours over since it was an Edinburgh Festival Fringe hit in 2023, it works.

 

Specialised knowledge of some of the programme’s more arcane points aren’t necessary to enjoy a show that Murphy leaves loose enough to ad lib with the audience. It won’t do any harm either, especially as brought to life so evocatively by the British Sign Language interpreter who accompanied him on this Edinburgh date.  

 

As Murphy sums up the suitably labyrinthine Buffy legend by channelling the rapid-fire apocalypse of a rewritten take on R.E.M.’s It’s the End of the World as We Know It (And I Feel Fine), it is the perfect primer for the forthcoming reboot of the show. A new Slayer awaits. Grr argh to that. 


The Herald, September 20th 2025

 

ends

 

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Losing Touch With My Mind - Psychedelia in Britain 1986-1990

DISC 1 1. THE STONE ROSES   -  Don’t Stop 2. SPACEMEN 3   -  Losing Touch With My Mind (Demo) 3. THE MODERN ART   -  Mind Train 4. 14 ICED BEARS   -  Mother Sleep 5. RED CHAIR FADEAWAY  -  Myra 6. BIFF BANG POW!   -  Five Minutes In The Life Of Greenwood Goulding 7. THE STAIRS  -  I Remember A Day 8. THE PRISONERS  -  In From The Cold 9. THE TELESCOPES   -  Everso 10. THE SEERS   -  Psych Out 11. MAGIC MUSHROOM BAND  -  You Can Be My L-S-D 12. THE HONEY SMUGGLERS  - Smokey Ice-Cream 13. THE MOONFLOWERS  -  We Dig Your Earth 14. THE SUGAR BATTLE   -  Colliding Minds 15. GOL GAPPAS   -  Albert Parker 16. PAUL ROLAND  -  In The Opium Den 17. THE THANES  -  Days Go Slowly By 18. THEE HYPNOTICS   -  Justice In Freedom (12" Version) ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Myra Mcfadyen - An Obituary

Myra McFadyen – Actress   Born January 12th 1956; died October 18th 2024   Myra McFadyen, who has died aged 68, was an actress who brought a mercurial mix of lightness and depth to her work on stage and screen. Playwright and artistic director of the Royal Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh, David Greig, called McFadyen “an utterly transformative, shamanic actor who could change a room and command an audience with a blink”. Citizens’ Theatre artistic director Dominic Hill described McFadyen’s portrayal of Puck in his 2019 production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream at the Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre in London as “funny, mischievous and ultimately heartbreaking.”   For many, McFadyen will be most recognisable from Mamma Mia!, the smash hit musical based around ABBA songs. McFadyen spent two years on the West End in Phyllida Lloyd’s original 1999 stage production, and was in both film offshoots. Other big screen turns included Rob Roy (1995) and Our Ladies (2019), both directed by Mi...
1 comment
Read more

The Passage – Hip Rebel Degenerates: Black, White and Red All Over

Prelude – The Power of Three   Fear. Power. Love. This life-and-death (un)holy trinity was the driving force and raisons d’être of The Passage, the still largely unsung Manchester band sired in what we now call the post-punk era, and who between 1978 and 1983 released four albums and a handful of singles.    Led primarily by composer Dick Witts, The Passage bridged the divide between contemporary classical composition and electronic pop as much as between the personal and the political. In the oppositional hotbed of Margaret Thatcher’s first landslide, The Passage fused agit-prop and angst, and released a song called Troops Out as a single. The song offered unequivocal support for withdrawing British troops from Northern Ireland.    They wrote Anderton’s Hall, about Greater Manchester’s born again right wing police chief, James Anderton, and, on Dark Times, rubbed Brechtian polemic up against dancefloor hedonism. On XOYO, their most commercial and potentially mo...
Post a Comment
Read more