Buffy the Vampire Slayer revamped and revisited in Portsmouth

Written by and starring Brendan Murphy, it is directed by Hamish MacDougall and plays the Kings Theatre, Southsea on Thursday, March 7 – fresh from a couple of months in North America.

“I have been doing a few parody shows,” says Brendan, “and for several years I did Potted Potter retelling the whole of the Harry Potter saga.

"A couple of my good friends wrote that and I performed it for a while with some other actors and then I wrote a one-man show retelling all ten seasons of Friends.

"This is basically me retrospectively trying to justify all the hours I spent in front of the TV screen!

"And I had just started touring that when lockdown came into place.

"I was doing that show at the Adelaide Fringe just days before all the borders closed. So I then needed a lockdown project and my lockdown project was to watch all of Buffy and to write lots of jokes every day, and by the time we were allowed out I had the play ready and waiting.

"The first outing was in 2021.

"We just did five performances at the Kings Head. There was no real promotion of the show. We just put up posters and it sold out. The Buffy fans sniffed it out and it went wild. And the producer that I work with saw this as an opportunity and said ‘Let's get out there and tour.’ We took it to Edinburgh and we won awards and we have just come back from our North American debut.

“I think Buffy the Vampire Slayer is a significant moment in modern TV.

"Not only is it a phenomenal story about female empowerment and having a secret strength, it was also the first representation of LBGTQ+ relationships on TV in a way that was not a novelty. It was not made into something frivolous in the storyline. But I think also the fact that Buffy has this secret power that is her strength was important. It's something that was very relatable to people who had an element of their lives that they could not reveal to other people.

"I think it's also very important in counterculture, the rock and indie soundtrack and really the writing was just phenomenal. The world creation was phenomenal. It set the precedent for so many different shows and I don't think sci-fi was ever the same again after that with that model.”

It ran from 1997-2004: “I was about ten when I started watching.

"I was a lot younger than the intended audience but for me it was just great. It was California and it was very aspirational and I just thought that this is what I wanted my life to be like. Unfortunately I was growing up in Birmingham so I didn't really have that experience but now I get to dress up as a vampire every day!”

Tickets from the Kings Theatre, Southsea.

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