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Dr Strangelove

Writer's picture: Paul GaineyPaul Gainey

Nuclear annihilation might not seem the obvious choice for comedy, yet Stanley Kubrick’s 1964 movie Dr Strangelove somehow turned Cold War terror into brilliantly silly satire.


Happily, Armando Iannucci and Sean Foley’s explosively funny new stage adaptation also pulls off that near-impossible high-wire act, with Steve Coogan succeeding Peter Sellers in bouncing between multiple outlandish roles.


Coogan, in fact, outdoes Sellers in playing four parts to his three. That necessitates some lightning-fast quick-changes and the odd creaking plot mechanism to get Coogan offstage. But the knowingness of the latter fits the tone of Foley’s assured production, which easily flips between Airplane! -style genre-busting farce and alarmingly resonant commentary on humanity’s reckless self-destructiveness.


With its legend tied up in that of its director Stanley Kubrick, its star Peter Sellers, its magnificent monochrome cinematography and moreover its release against the backdrop of the actual Cold War, Dr Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb is a film comedy that gets treated with arthouse reverence.


And for that reason, there are nagging doubts about the idea of a stage version. Is director Sean Foley in the same league as Kubrick? Is Coogan in the same league as Sellers? Can it possibly be anything like as timely as the original? What do you do about the whole black and white thing?


Broadly speaking the answers are no, no, no. But here’s the thing: at its heart Armando Iannucci and Foley‘s stage adaptation is just very aware that Dr Strangelove is fun, funny and possessed of a play-like structure, with the action almost all taking place in two locations.


Foley’s production has some bite, but it’s also light and zingy, confident that with a couple of tweaks and a few new gags, the absurdist satire of the source material will amuse.


Taking on the same roles Sellers did - plus one extra - Coogan is particularly strong as the most Alan Partridge-esque of the characters, Captain Lional Mandrake, a hapless RAF man who has been seconded to bonkers American General Ripper (John Hopkins).


As the story begins, it‘s slowly dawning on the affable, servile Mandrake that Ripper might be totally insane. And so it proves, as the paranoid commanding officer uses a ‘creative’ interpretation of military protocol to circumnavigate the chain of command and call a massive nuclear strike on the USSR

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This does not go unnoticed by said chain of command: President Merkin Muffley (Coogan again) is aghast and assembles his cabinet, generals and creepy ex-Nazi scientist Dr Strangelove (Coogan, of course) to try and come up with a plan to stop the bombers, who will answer to a code that only Ripper knows.


The dialogue is relentlessly amusing, and the characters are a dream. Muffley is a straight role for Coogan, but he’s entertaining as Strangelove and an absolute hoot as bomber commander Major TJ Kong. But the real treat is his white-haired, wildly camp, extravagantly accented former-Nazi scientist Dr Strangelove. Supposedly reformed, he alarms his colleagues with suspect statements while his automated artificial hand jolts into a Nazi salute.


Wonderful too are John Hopkins’ unhinged Ripper, Tony Jayawardena’s sardonic Russian ambassador, Giles Terera’s gum-smacking, warmongering General Turgidson, and Mark Hadfield’s genially hapless advisor Faceman.


The idea of a generation of American men gearing up to do something totally insane and self-destructive – with catastrophic repercussions for the rest of the planet – truly does not seem out of date at all.


Foley adds a witty musical framing (the movie’s use of Vera Lynn is bookended with “Try a Little Tenderness”) and, via Hildegard Bechtler’s canny design, efficiently whisks us between Burpelson airbase, a bomber cockpit, and the Pentagon War Room. And yes, we do get the iconic line “Gentlemen, you can’t fight in here! This is the War Room!”.


At a time when the world feels terrifyingly precarious once again, this is very much a play for today – both an astute skewering of our worst tendencies and most paranoid fears, and an outrageously funny, much-needed release valve.

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