FEATURE: Buffy the Vampire Slayer - Amends

Previously on Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Angel has returned from a hell dimension, but the gang are struggling to forgive him for the murders he committed beforehand, namely Jenny Calendar.

It's a rare festive episode this time with Amends, the Joss Whedon take on Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol via your standard supernatural route. It's unseasonably hot in Sunnydale as the holiday season gets underway, both Christmas and Hanukkah for Willow who is not worshipping at the altar of Santa. Angel begins seeing the faces of victims past in his dreams and in front of him, tormenting him about his previous life and trying to guilt him into committing suicide for their own ends. Buffy and her really awful fringe decide to try and bring him back. 

Redemption is very much the order of the day here, not just for Angel who we shall talk about later, but for the Scoobies themselves who are still making their own amends for mistakes earlier in the season. Oz and Willow's reconciliation is suitably low-key and adorable, beginning with an awkward hug, nearly flatlining with an unsuccessful seduction attempt and yet still remaining nice and sweet at the end. Xander and Giles too make their peace with Buffy's relationship with Angel, offering her their help in his time of need.

The subject matter ensures that it is pretty gloomy for a Christmas episode though I don't really expect Buffy to indulge in something light and fluffy involving elves or candycanes. There are small moments of welcome relief in the episode like Xander's attempt to get information out of Willy the Snitch or Willow's seduction with added Barry White. What it does do is hark back to the Dickensian tale I mentioned at the beginning without the sense of humour. The First takes on the role of the Ghost of Christmas Past, haunting Angel with his victims and mistakes, taunting him into believing that he will never be able to repent for his actions. Buffy becomes his Christmas Present (both in temporal and relationship terms - they officially get back together here), trying everything to keep him in the world and talk him down from committing suicide. Angel therefore becomes his own Christmas Future, offered a second chance with a Christmas miracle as snow falls on a sunless Sunnydale morning.

For a relatively small scale episode in the middle of the third season, Amends has got a fair amount going on in it which will have further repercussions across both this series and on to Angel. It seems appropriate to kick off with The First Evil, the foe of the episode trying to get Angel to turn evil in this instalment and then going on to be the eventual final season Big Bad. For something that will have a massive impact on Sunnydale later, the First don't really make all that much of an impression here, acting as more of a facilitator for character moments than a foe in their own right though they do offer weird dream sex to tempt Angel into killing Buffy and turn evil again. Nefarious. Also, their minions are creepy, particularly if you have a thing about missing eyes (I do), and the First's ill-defined powers offer a glimpse into Angel's past (and a less than welcome return for Appalling Irish Accent Angel). 

However, what it does do is give David Boreanaz a chance dig a bit deeper into the good side of the equation. Much of his guilt stems not from his strength as a vampire, but from his weakness as a man. The flashback to his human life shows him drunkenly falling over, seen earlier in the series, his turning with Darla is based more on the fact that he thought he was going to have sex with her than actually becoming a vampire and losing his soul to Buffy is seen as a sign of weakness by all involved. Throughout his whole speech, he refers to this chance to commit suicide, to rid the world of his evil, as something strong, until Buffy turns it around on him by stating the strong thing to do would be to stay and fight it.

In that beautiful, haunting final scene before the snow starts to fall, it sets up Angel's solo mission swiftly with the idea that he can repent for his previous sins. Angel suddenly gets a renewed focus and an extra depth that being Buffy's beau just never offered. His final scene in which his soul is laid bare and he is seconds from suicide is a powerful rendition of complete and utter desolation. It's one of the best pieces of writing in the entire series and perfectly establishes Angel's renewed sense of self.

The final Christmas Miracle snowfall that allows Angel to escape with his life has been talked about a lot over the years since it first aired. It's hard to avoid the overtly Christian connotations in such an act, particularly given the episode's themes of redemption and repentance, but it also allows for your own interpretation. Though The First take credit for bringing Angel back, that wouldn't account for the miracle to keep him alive. Personally, I think it's the Powers That Be who go on to help Angel in his own series are responsible, particularly given the Shanshu Prophecy. Oops. Getting ahead of myself there (very much looking forward to starting Angel too).

Quote of the Week:

Angel: It's not the demon in me that needs killing, Buffy. It's the man.

Let's Get Trivial: The Mutant Enemy at the end of this episode wears a Santa hat.

- Becky

You can check out Becky's look at previous episode The Wish here.

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THEATRE REVIEW: Great Expectations

Almost every other review I’ve read of Jo Clifford’s adaptation of Dickens’ classic bildungsroman has kicked off proceedings with an obligatory pun on its title. Compelled to do the same, I should therefore point out that I trundled off to Great Expectations the play at the Vaudeville with absolutely no expectations whatsoever, seeing as decades of TV and film productions have taught us nothing if not that Dickens adaptations really can go either way.

My expectations were raised somewhat after seeing the set, which really is stunning. Cobwebs hang from absolutely everything in the elaborately decorated room set up, emphasising the eerie presence of jilted bride Miss Havisham, with her rotting wedding cake given centre stage. There’s also a mantelpiece, windows with light artfully streaming in, chairs and even light fittings. It’s impressive. Which is a good job really, as it is the only setting we see for the entire production, but more on that later. Fresh from a UK tour, this show is the first full length Great Expectations to ever be presented in the West End. And cast aside, unfortunately at times it is easy to see why.

It’s clear that the play wanted to bring out elements of the book you may well discuss in a book group or seminar, but miss on a casual read through. This dogmatic following of the themes of the novel, however, whilst admirable, and fairly rare these days, means that many ideas feel thrown in and at odds with the nuances of a stage show. Taylor Jay-Davies does a good job of heading up the cast as young Pip, but this is spoiled somewhat by the haunting presence of his older self, played by Paul Nivison. Whilst this is certainly an interesting idea, and draws attention to the novel as a first person memoir, you can’t help but wish that he’d just give the poor boy five minutes to hold the fort on his own without the constant fear of accidentally tripping up his adult persona. It’s nothing short of a relief when one finally sits down and leaves the other to it.

Jay-Davies' earnest performance is matched by that of the equally genuine Josh Ellwell, as Joe Gargery, with Jack Ellis (Jaggers), Rhys Warrington (Herbert Pocket) and Sarah Robertson (Biddy) giving other performances of note. Grace Rowe grates a little as Estella, but her impassioned final speeches go some way to reconciling her to us, and Paula Wilcox certainly looks the part as the infamous Miss Havisham, but lacks the presence to make the character as terrifying as she should be. Difficult though it admittedly is to match a theatrical performance to a well-established literary character, the majority of the cast leave a little to be desired when held against their fictional counterparts, leaving most of the play feeling a bit flat.

This isn’t helped by the lack of set changes. In a show where none of the performances particularly grab you, and the lines of the story are blurred by the aesthetics of trying to include a visual representation of every trope, as an audience you start to daydream about set changes. Maybe one will happen when Pip goes to London? No. Maybe there will be a different set in Act 2? No. I fully appreciate that, given the detail of the Miss Havisham set, budget may well have been an issue, but then again it does seem as if some sort of statement was being made through the use of only one set of scenery. I’m not 100% sure what it was, but I think there was one in there somewhere. Again, this is admirable, but as a Great Expectations as well as theatre fan dying to see what the famous graveyard and marsh scenes would look like on a stage, I was more than a little disappointed to see them played out on a dining room table. The whole thing looks beautiful, don’t get me wrong, despite the fact that the heavy handed Gothic moments make you wonder if Tim Burton didn’t direct a considerable part of it, but again it’s as if the creative team got a bit caught up in the idea of showing the production in cinemas, and forgot about the fact that, first and foremost, the action is happening on a stage.

I’m told that somewhere in the foyer there was a note about how we ‘won’t see another Dickens adaptation like this for 200 years’, or something to that effect. And no, I daresay we won’t. He remains as notoriously difficult to adapt as ever, with only one of the many individual threads of the wider tapestry of each piece ever managing to be tugged at once, leaving the others forgotten about and neglected. Like Miss Havisham herself, perhaps Dickens should be left alone for a bit? Not necessarily in a dusty room with a rotting cake like Paula Wilcox but just on a shelf, in a book where he belongs.

 **

http://greatexpectationstheshow.com/

Jen

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