Buffy the Vampire Slayer ran for seven seasons on TV and never jumped the shark to overstay its welcome. Although audiences could not really expect the astonishingly high quality of the second and third seasons to be maintained throughout the run, the end of the show was a cause of regret, not relief.
There is the niggling worry Brendan Murphy’s Buffy Revamped might descend into an obsessive, over-detailed show suitable only for conventions. However, director Hamish MacDougall sets an atmosphere that is respectful of the source material while cheerfully irreverent in presentation and constantly entertaining.
Buffy Revamped is a full theatrical experience, not a simple monologue. The stage set is stuffed with memorabilia from the show. Although Brendan Murphy’s script does not bog down in detail, the author makes clear he shares a fan’s enthusiasm for the show with a number of in-jokes. "Once more with feeling" he calls during the concluding singalong, knowing that is the title of the legendary musical episode.
Brendan Murphy takes for granted the audience is aware of the unique feature of Buffy the Vampire Slayer—rather than being the traditional victim, the none-too-bright blond female is actually the hero—and concentrates on telling her adventures. Spike, once Buffy’s nemesis, later her lover, returns by supernatural means to find he is engaged to summarise in 70 minutes the events of the entire series. However, Spike is not the most reliable witness and allows his opinions—he is especially dismissive of Buffy’s other boyfriends—to intrude into the narrative.
There is a high level of audience participation with Murphy, in the manner of a stand-up comedian, regularly soliciting opinions from the audience and even offering to use one of them as a blood sacrifice. Murphy slips out of character to complain the budget for the tour is not sufficient to provide wooden stakes (well chopsticks) for the entire audience to take part in the final confrontation.
Murphy pokes fun at the occasional illogical development in the show—a nightclub whose patrons are all too young to buy alcohol and the failure to get any dramatic value from a regular character who is a werewolf. More significantly, the character Kendra is a rarity not for being a superhero vampire slayer but a woman of colour in the vanilla small town where the show is set. Yet Buffy Revamped is not a critical overview of the series; mention is not made of how the witty dialogue, apparently written in daunting teenspeak, can be understood by all generations.
The presentation begins as one might expect, with Murphy verbally summarising the first-season events in a breathless manner, but becomes increasingly imaginative and audacious as the show progresses. Buffy Revamped may not be exhaustive in content but looks close to physically exhausting for Brendan Murphy, who is in constant motion, leaping into quick costume changes to assume a range of characters, interacting with the audience or bursting into song.
Methods of summarising the shows include adaptations of popular songs—"It’s The End Of the World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine)" works particularly well. Before becoming a vampire, Spike was a notoriously bad poet so, naturally, Season Five of the show is summarised in poetic form.
Buffy Revamped is intended for fans of the show; anyone with only a casual interest is unlikely to appreciate the dense amount of information and in-jokes crammed into the limited running time. Nevertheless, as an imaginatively staged celebration of a television highpoint, Buffy Revamped works perfectly and is bound to prompt audiences to return home and start watching the show all over again.