“Dr. Strangelove” at Noël Coward Theatre 

Neil Dowden in the West End
1 November 2024

The mood has turned apocalyptic in the West End. Stanley Kubrick’s iconic 1964 film Dr. Strangelove has been adapted for the stage for the first time by Armando Iannucci and Sean Foley, directed by Foley, and starring the chameleon Steve Coogan in multiple roles like Peter Sellers did on screen. The black comedy satirizes the existential absurdity of the mutually assured destruction (MAD) policy of nuclear deterrent followed by superpowers USA and USSR during the Cold War.  

Steve Coogan and Giles Terera (foreground).
Photo credit: Manuel Harlan.

The movie was released only 18 months after the Cuban Missile Crisis – probably the closest the world has come to an all-out nuclear war – so it struck a nerve then. But the scenario still resonates especially today with the proxy war between Russia and the West over Ukraine when it seems the Doomsday Clock is ticking closer to midnight again.  

The show is great fun and super-slick, but lacks the genuine chill of the film – it’s a bit too entertaining for its own good. Iannucci and Foley have been respectful – arguably even over-reverential – to Kubrick’s vision, though the subtitle “or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb” has been dropped. It even re-uses music from the film: at the start the cast dance along to “Try a Little Tenderness” and at the end they are led in a rendition of “We’ll Meet Again” by Vera Lynn (the only female presence on stage in the whole play), while the B-52 bomber that does not turn back from its hell-bent mission is accompanied by “When Johnny Comes Marching Home”. 

The story sticks closely to the original. Madcap General Jack Ripper puts Burpelson Air Base on red alert for a nuclear attack on the USSR because he believes the Soviets have been poisoning America’s water supply – with British RAF Captain Mandrake failing to stop his lunacy. In the War Room at the Pentagon General Turgidson tells President Muffley that it will be almost impossible to recall all the USAF bombers in time – as maverick pilot Major T.J. Kong proves – so advises him to destroy the enemy before it can retaliate.  

However, Muffley – bringing in the Soviet ambassador – phones the Soviet premier to warn him so they can shoot the planes down, only to find out they have a doomsday machine that is automatically activated by an attack. The president’s scientific adviser – and former Nazi – Dr. Strangelove then seizes the moment with his own plan. 

Iannucci and Foley have inserted a few contemporary references without overdoing it. There are allusions (though unnamed) to Trump’s democratic election results denial and Putin’s enemies falling to their deaths, as well as to bombing Jerusalem. There’s also a brief self-referential mention of the gender imbalance in the (all-male) War Room, while the blatantly sexist appearance of the sole woman in the film bringing in food on a trolley has been replaced with a camp male waiter. The disability of the sinister, wheelchair-bound Dr. Strangelove – whose artificial black-gloved hand has a life of its own as he tries to stop it making a Sieg Heil salute – is retained despite its dodginess as an integral part of the story. 

Famous lines from the movie like Ripper’s “But today, war is too important to be left to the politicians” and Muffley’s “Gentlemen, you can’t fight in here! This is the War Room” still make an impact. Iannucci and Foley have also added quite a few of their own, some misfiring but most hitting the target, such as the witty use of “pre-taliation” and a discussion of what towns could be sacrificed culminating in “Stoke”. The humour does, however, veer towards the farcical at times blunting the show’s satirical edge. This is surprising in view of Iannucci’s razor sharpness in political TV shows and films like The Thick of It, Veep, and The Death of Stalin – and he co-created the squirm-inducing Alan Partridge with Coogan. 

Foley – who also worked with Coogan, on his own film Mindhorn – is also a comedy specialist, first as a writer/performer with The Right Size then later as director (he recently stepped down as artistic director of Birmingham Rep). He has been involved in successful stage adaptations of Ealing comedies The Ladykillers and The Man in the White Suit, as well as Withnail and I, but his tendency is to go broad as is the case here at times in what is a thoroughly enjoyable and fast-moving show. The staging is impressively fluid. 

Hildegard Bechtler’s imposing set for the War Room is very similar to Ken Adam’s design in the movie, with a huge circular strip light hanging above a circular table bearing numerous telephones (including the red hotline) and the “Big Board” charting the progress of the American bombers. The scene-changing is seamless with the airbase office – featuring a huge desk in front of encased guns on the wall and the US flag – and B-52 cockpit with detailed instrument panel. Jessica Hung Han Yun’s lighting and Ben and Max Ringham’s sound effectively evoke the battle in the airbase, and Akhila Krishnan’s projection of mountainous landscape cleverly simulates the bomber’s flight towards its disastrous destination. 

Equally impressive in smooth change-overs is Coogan’s multi-roling. In fact he goes one better than Sellers in playing Kong (whom Sellers was slated to play but later withdrew) as well as Strangelove, Muffley, and Mandrake. It’s a rare stage appearance for Coogan, but he does brilliantly in inhabiting each character: Mandrake’s clipped-voiced, wobbling-stiff-upper-lip RAF officer; the calmly moderate but increasingly exasperated president; the gung-ho, cowboy-hat-wearing Southerner Kong; and above all the Aryan blond-haired, German-accented titular scientist – initially seen in a video call with the president – who can barely suppress his glee at the impending catastrophe.  

There is strong comic support from John Hopkins as the cigar-chomping, gun-toting, paranoid rogue General Ripper, Giles Terera as the aggressively hawkish Turgidson, Mark Hadfield as the mild-mannered, inept politician Faceman, and Tony Jayawardena as the epicurean Russian Ambassador Bakov apparently more interested in what food is on offer than the fate of the world.