Web: threeclubs.com
Contact: info@threeclubs.com
Players: Loyal Thomas Ruddell (Spike); Lauren Sperling (Anya); Lee Thomen; Mike Bowers (Mustard Solo/Ensemble); Susannah Corrington (Willow); Heidi Kendrick (Tara); Kelly Maryanski (Buffy); Ronnie Tullo (Dawn); Matt Zunich (Xander); Phil D’Amore (Sweet)
Sometimes, you see something advertised on a venue’s calendar, and you must blink to ensure that you read it correctly. Once the details are confirmed, you simply have to attend. There’s no way on God’s green Earth that this writer could see that Hollywood cocktail bar Three Clubs was hosting a live “parody” version of the musical episode of Buffy, the Vampire Slayer, and not show up.
The “Once More, With Feeling” episode was the seventh of the sixth season of Buffy, originally airing in November 2001. So this insane hour of television is a quarter of a century old now and it’s developed quite the cult following. There’s a soundtrack album available, and it’s occasionally screened in movie theaters with attendees encouraged to dress as the characters, Rocky Horror style. A live parody was always the logical next step.
“The idea actually came from back in 2014 between me, original Director Jason Fliess, and a few other Buffy lovers in Chicago,” says Kelly Maryanski, who plays the role of Buffy and had a huge hand in the development of the show. “The first version of this parody show was produced as a one-night-only staged concert reading at Hamburger Marys in Chicago in 2015. We kept getting requests to bring it back, so we did pretty much every year after that until the pandemic. The cast and team rotated a bit with every reiteration of the show as gags and other stage directions were changed into what it is today.”
What it is, is a joy. There are clearly super-fans of the show in attendance, people who know every single word. A few did dress up, and they got to strut their stuff on stage at the beginning. Meanwhile, the fact that the show started with a live performance of the “Previously, on Buffy the Vampire Slayer” recap is hilarious, right out of the traps.
The cast are full of beans; their enthusiastic, joyful, and genuinely heartfelt takes on these beloved characters is to be admired. Josh Whedon has been praised for the music he wrote for this bizarre episode, and they really shine on stage.
Special mention for Ruddell as anti-hero Spike, and Kendrick for a delicate Tara, as well as Maryanski’s Buffy. But everybody was a ton of fun.
“This show was originally just going to be another one night only fun bar show, but as the fates have it, we are actually doing a residency at Three Clubs in Hollywood for the rest of 2026, performing once a month on Tuesdays (except for October),” Maryanski told MC. Try to get there.
