Review Roundup: DR STRANGELOVE Starring Steve Coogan

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.

Lucy Habron, Far Out Magazine: But just as how the movie stood as a testament to Sellers’ talent, this new play is an absolute shrine to Coogan’s. There is barely a moment where he isn’t on stage in one or other of his characters. The switch-arounds were handled masterfully, using body doubles to keep the president in the war room setting even as Coogan switched into Dr Strangelove and using pre-recorded clips to allow his various characters to be in conversation.

J.C, LondonLivingLarge: There is a great deal of silliness and some very funny running gags, and if possible, the characters seem even more exaggerated than in the original. Steve Coogan takes on the multiple roles played by the unforgettable Peter Sellers (Dr. Strangelove, Captain Mandrake and President Muffley), and he also adds that of Major TJ Kong to his repertoire, a character which Sellers ended up not playing in the original film. Coogan's versatility is impressive, and while he manages to individuate each of these personae, it is his performance as the ex-Nazi scientist, Dr. Strangelove, that really stands out. As the blustering and belligerent General Ripper, who orders the crazy pre-emptive nuclear strike because he thinks that water fluoridation has been polluting his bodily fluids, John Hopkins also puts in a wonderfully over-the-top performance.

Marianka Swain, London Theatre: 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.

Fiona Mountford, iNews: Sean Foley, alas, is no Stanley Kubrick. This director has a dispiriting habit of reducing everything he touches to silliness, which he repeats once again here in an adaptation co-written with Armando Iannucci. Whereas Kubrick has pitch-black comedy intercutting a mood of gravitas, Foley unwisely has occasional serious moments raising their heads above cheap jokes, meaning that those unfamiliar with the film will quite simply wonder what all the fuss is about.

Jim Keaveney, The Arts Dispatch: Iannucci and Foley remain largely faithful to the film with an extra half-hour of light comedy added to the running time for good measure. There are only a few references to modern politics – Trump and the Middle East get overly obvious mentions – but what the play lacks is any cutting satire of modern world politics. The result is the play feels more nostalgic than contemporary.

Neil Norman, The Express: In an ash blonde wig and scooting around in a wheelchair, Coogan’s Strangelove is faithful to the Wernher von Braun-like character without replicating Sellers’ performance. As the bewildered British officer Captain Mandrake he is vocally a dead ringer for King Charles III which adds to the fun. The dialogue is largely unchanged and we have the pleasure of hearing “Gentlemen, you can’t fight in here! This is the War Room!” among other classic lines.

Neil Norman, The Express: In an ash blonde wig and scooting around in a wheelchair, Coogan’s Strangelove is faithful to the Wernher von Braun-like character without replicating Sellers’ performance. As the bewildered British officer Captain Mandrake he is vocally a dead ringer for King Charles III which adds to the fun. The dialogue is largely unchanged and we have the pleasure of hearing “Gentlemen, you can’t fight in here! This is the War Room!” among other classic lines.

Sarah Hemming, Financial Times: It’s full of cracking performances, however. Giles Terera, as the hawkish General Turgidson, smoothly games civilian casualty numbers as if calculating odds on the weather, while John Hopkins’ General Ripper, spouting garbage with complete conviction, feels frighteningly familiar. Meanwhile Coogan is terrific, making each of Sellers’ roles his own with honed comic timing. He’s particularly good as Mandrake, his mild manner and plummy English accent masking his rising desperation, and he’s spectacularly sinister as the ex-Nazi nuclear scientist, Dr Strangelove.