Review Roundup: What Did the Critics Think of Steve Coogan in DR STRANGELOVE?

Steve Coogan stars in the first ever adaption of Stanley Kubrick’s iconic Dr. Strangelove, as the world premiere stage production prepares for a strictly limited run at London’s Noël Coward Theatre.

This jet-black comedy masterpiece, about a rogue U.S. General who triggers a nuclear crisis, is brought to the stage by acclaimed, BAFTA and Emmy Award winner Armando Iannucci and Olivier Award winner Sean Foley, in an explosively funny satire of mutually assured destruction.

What did the critics think?

Photo Credit: Manuel Harlan

Gary Naylor, BroadwayWorld: Coogan’s energy is astonishing, on stage more or less the whole time, save the (very) quick changes required to appear and reappear in four roles, he draws on every element of his comic heritage from voices, to pratfalls, to character work, to farce. If the script needs a fistful of clunky devices to get him into the shadowy backdrop only to have him return swiftly as somebody else, it’s worth it for the platform it gives for his virtuosity.

Arifa Akbar, The Guardian: The script sometimes glints with the humorous intelligence of Iannucci’s The Thick of It (there is great war jargon with words like “pre-taliate”). At other times, however, it is pedestrian or soft in its satire. This might be because the adaptation follows the film so faithfully that it feels dated, the stakes low. In the 1960s, the Cuban missile crisis had terrified the world and the film exposed the lunacy of the mutually assured destruction theory. This story’s absurdist slide into nuclear war contains a historic fear for a present world in which warfare seems surreptitiously conducted through AI and social media disinformatio

Claire Alfree, The Telegraph: Yet if Foley’s production isn’t willing to recreate the film point by point (and how could it?), then what is it instead? It’s a question the show never adequately answers, trapped between the film’s formidable legacy and an inability to recreate it anew theatrically. Hildegard Bechtler’s set exemplifies the problem – there’s the odd nod to the original, notably the War Room’s circular overhead light, but it settles mainly for perfunctory designs in regulation 1960s grey: the War Room, the office, in the second act a vast bomber jet, past which fly projected imagery of the Russian tundra. A designer such as Bob Crowley might have found a way to translate Ken Adam’s original stark chiaroscuro into a fresh theatrical language; instead we get dull bright lighting that flattens everything it touches.

Clive Davis, The Times: It’s a reboot that will appeal most of all to Coogan fans who aren’t familiar with the film, which celebrated its 60th birthday this year. If you do know the original, it’s fun to hear some of the slivers of extra dialogue added by Iannucci and Foley after scrolling through Kubrick’s notebooks and drafts. All the same, set designer Hildegard Bechtler’s war room is never going to look as imposing as Ken Adam’s James Bond-like screen creation. And if the scale model of the B-52, flying high over a video backdrop, gives the second half of the show an undeniable kick, the rest of the production looks cramped in the confines of the Noël Coward.

Dave Fargnoli, The Stage: Foley’s breezy staging captures the absolute absurdity of this exercise in mutually assured destruction, even if the play’s momentum is frequently interrupted by the demands of a story that jumps between a quartet of main characters, all played by Coogan. Foley approaches the challenge of having these characters interact with a variety of techniques, ranging from slickly edited videos to pre-recorded audio clips and some frustratingly slow costume changes obfuscated by illusion designer Chris Fisher’s seamless misdirection.

Alice Saville, The Independent: Comedy famously ages badly but the humour here is evergreen, prickling with ingenious wordplay and sickly surrealism. Still, Sean Foley’s overly efficient production stops short of full comic mayhem. Coogan is oh-so-good and oh-so-professional, but he’d be funnier if this show let us see some of the messy vulnerability that makes his creation Alan Partridge so lovable – if it let us glimpse the manic charging around and sweat and hectic costume changes behind the scenes, or revelled in the crowd’s glee at each successive reappearance.

Alice Saville, The Independent: Comedy famously ages badly but the humour here is evergreen, prickling with ingenious wordplay and sickly surrealism. Still, Sean Foley’s overly efficient production stops short of full comic mayhem. Coogan is oh-so-good and oh-so-professional, but he’d be funnier if this show let us see some of the messy vulnerability that makes his creation Alan Partridge so lovable – if it let us glimpse the manic charging around and sweat and hectic costume changes behind the scenes, or revelled in the crowd’s glee at each successive reappearance.