Issue date: 5/16/08 Section: On the Scene

Mix together cheesy vampires, Star Wars inspired dream sequences and mass amounts of projectile popcorn and you've got Brandi the Vampire Staker, the hilarious play by playwright Kevin Michael Fuld.

The play is a spoof of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and doesn't even try to hide its spoofiness. The name of each character is similar to Buffy's characters, Spruce instead of Willow as Brandi's redheaded sidekick, the geeky yet lovable Xavier to take the place of Xander, and the ever-so-silent Odd parodying the reserved Oz from Buffy are the members of Brandi's Scooby gang. The big bad of vampiredom is Count Vader, or Master Vader to all of his minions. He's paired with a parody of the evil Spike called Steak who helps Vader in his evil plot to become invincible.

Fuld took the characters in Buffy, and focused on one or two traits and exaggerated them into the parody characters. In one scene, the librarian Mr. Miles, played by Joe Porter, is talking to Shannon Rasmussen's Brandi about the upcoming Apocalypse, and he repeatedly takes off his glasses and polishes them - a tick that Buffy's Mr. Giles has, just not as extreme as Miles makes it. Rae Matthews plays Kandi, the popular girl who represents the original series' Cordelia, and is 10 times more obnoxious than the original. Almost every time she came on stage she had the audience booing her and wishing for something nefarious to befall her.

The story is told in three acts, and audience members are encouraged to interact, which at the Pocket Sandwich Theater means throwing popcorn - and lots of it. They needed two intermissions just so they could clean the popcorn off the stage.

The play doesn't try to emulate everything about the series. For instance, instead of a tall, dark and stoic Angel-type as Brandi's love interest, we're given the cryptic and horny Zeus, played by Brandon Parker, a vampire who has soul - the disco ball-dancing type.

And puns are made throughout the play, especially after Brandi has killed a few vampires, which are the same three actors in different outfits, time after time. Brandi then comments on how all vampires start to seem alike after awhile.

Brandi the Vampire Staker is a humorous take on a cult show and will leave audience members groaning and laughing for more. Being a big Buffy the Vampire Slayer fan, I loved the play. But even those who aren't huge fans of Buffy should enjoy it. The show runs through May 17 at the Pocket Sandwich Theater and you should bring plenty of money for popcorn - because half the fun is the intermission popcorn wars.

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