Displaying items by tag: Sean Foley

DR STRANGELOVE: NATIONAL THEATRE LIVE

UK, 2025, 130 minutes, Colour.

Steve Coogan, Giles Terera, John Hopkins, Oliver Alvin-Wilson, Penny Ashmore, Ben Deery, Richard Dempsey.

Directed by Sean Foley.

Stanley Kubrick’s comic masterpiece, Dr Strangelove: or, How I Stopped Worrying and Learntedto Love the Bomb, was released at the end of January 1964. It was in production during the nuclear crisis, the missiles of October, the 13 days, Kennedy and Kruschev, and Cuba, October 1962. It was more than relevant. It was a satire to disturb the American consciousness, to disturb world audiences. It was based on a novel by satirist, Terry Southern. And the screenplay was cowritten by Kubrick himself with Peter George.

The film had a significant cast, most notably Peter Sellers in three roles, with Sterling Hayden, George C.Scott and a young James Earl Jones in the cast. Many of its sequences are part of cinema memory.

British writer and director, Armand Iannucci, well known for his satires including The Thick of It, and the Death of Stalin, has adapted Kubrick’s screenplay for the stage. It stays very close to the film in characters and dialogue and the situations, indicating how a satire for the 1960s can have a similar relevance in a changed world situation, especially the Trump US and world of 2025.

While Peter Sellers played three roles, the British officer Lionel Mandrake, the American President, Merkin Muffley, and the mad scientist, Dr Strangelove, with a Nazi past, and an uncontrollable arm often compelling him to try a Nazi salute, Audiences will be pleased to know that this is enjoyably included here. (One of the other features of the film was the cowboy pilot, TJ Kong, played by Slim Pickens, ending the film by riding the bomb hurtling towards earth with a rodeo yippee, and Vera Lynn’s song, We’ll Meet Again – and these are included in this production.)

The star of this performance is Steve Coogan, reprising very effectively the three Peter Sellers roles but also adding a fourth role, that of the cowboy pilot, Kong. And he does this within two hours of performance time. And, fascinating to see how the production handles Coogan in the  four roles, sometimes a stand-in actor for him as president with back to the audience, or having mandrake on the other end of a phone, or having Dr Strangelove appear in a video contact with the War Room -and the amazing speed for him to change costumes and wigs.

The staging of the they is expert, the audience watching the change of scenery, General Jack Ripper’s command post, generals gathered with the President in the War Room but, especially, the three pilots in the cockpit of the plane with filmed background of snowy mountain peaks, their flying steadily towards nuclear apocalypse.

But, it is the satirical dialogue, sometimes very witty, sometimes touches of slapstick, all kinds of misunderstandings, caricatures of American military, the touch of sendup of the British officer and his accent and vocabulary, the portrait of the mad general preoccupied with fluoride and bodily essences and the destruction of America, the gung ho anti-Communist military official, the Russian ambassador…

At first, watching the National Theatre Live version of the stage play, it seems artificial. But, gradually, through the skill of the performances and the wit of the dialogue, we are gradually drawn into the black comedy – but, always realising that through the exaggerations, there is more than a glimpse of truth, always a reality check.