London, Oct 1962, 4:45am. A spindly fellow exits a rented apartment on Brompton road primed for another day's work.
The casual passer-by might presume his eyes were bleary from the dazzling lights of Harrods department store across the way, but they weren’t; because he hadn’t actually been to bed yet.
Terry Southern popped another blue pill as a black cab drove him to an address in Knightsbridge a few minutes away. Stepening out of one vehicle, he quickly climbed into the back of a waiting Bentley. A raised wooden plank had been installed across the back seats to act as a table.
The driver had just nodded good morning when a third man pulled open the door and slid into the rear, next to Terry. Stanley Kubrick took a breath, looked down at Terry’s notebook and index cards, shuffling them in his head. "All right. Where were we?"
Counterculture writer Terry Southern and filmmaker Stanley Kubrick wrote on the road to Shepperton Studios, where sets for the script they were writing were already being built.
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Listen: Dr. Strangelove - Armando Iannucci and Sean Foley talk to Brendan O'Connor
Their resulting screenplay was inspired by the novel Red Alert", from former RAF pilot turned CND member Peter George. George, a bit of a drinker, had spent time with the director’s family, regaling Christine Kubrick with stories of his Irish roots and Ireland’s oppression throughout the centuries.
Thus were the guts of Dr. Strangelove conceived: by two Americans in the back of vintage car in sixties London under the influence of a drunken Irish novelist.
London, Oct 2024, 7.30pm. Sixty two years later; and another artist of Irish descent, Steve Coogan, attempts to play the four key roles in the new stage adaptation of Dr. Strangelove at the Noel Coward Theatre - only fifteen minutes from where the original movie was written, as it turns out.
Coogan tries to trump the original film's star, Peter Sellers, by playing one more character than even the legendary comedian and actor could pull off, and, with a little help from modern technology, he succeeds.
It helps that the material has been adapted for the stage by Coogan’s old Partridge mucker, writer Armando Iannucci, along with co-writer, Sean Foley, who also directs.
"Comedy is a way of sugaring the pill of difficult subject matter"
— Dr. Strangelove (@DrStrangeloveHQ) November 1, 2024
Opening Night: Mission accomplished ✅ #DrStrangeloveOnStage pic.twitter.com/Hs2DogQJax
The original film was dominated by three huge sets, all of which are recreated here - even the one that’s often referred to as 'the most famous movie set in the world’, the War Room, with it’s distinctive giant lighting rig. It’s here that most of the story takes place - or is occasionally sung-and-danced out.
Strangelove isn’t a musical - on screen or on stage; but some tuneful touches have been added to help make up for any missing those Kubrickian visual flourishes. All of them offer suitably pointed and funny counterpoints to the action, enough so that you'll be left humming the chorus on the way home.
If you're oh-so-familiar with the original movie, what you will experience is a surprisingly faithful adaptation of this apocalyptic tale, albeit broader - it’s a play after all - yet still brilliantly hilarious.
Many of the biggest laughs on the night came from the unexpected delivery of some of the more familiar sequences; with Coogan often choosing a different voice or emphasis, or utilising (seemingly spontaneous) physical comedy. With Strangelove's split-screen film techniques impossible to recreate on stage, a giant screen and body double trickery is used mostly successfully. That said, gung-ho B-52 pilot Major ‘King’ Kong suffered somewhat from reduced stage time. This was the one part that Sellers couldn’t crack; character actor Slim Pickens steals the show in Kubrick’s movie, and Coogan gives him a run
With the weight of the giant invisible ‘K’ hanging over them, I'm delighted to say the whole casts delivers, especially Giles Terera in the George C. Scott role of General Buck Turgidson and John Hopkins following Sterling Hayden as General Jack D. Ripper, both with particular XXL size shoes to fill. Speaking of costumes, sitting three rows from the front it was impossible not to notice how absolutely impeccable the outfits by costume and stage designer Hildegard Bechtler were; American or British, every military uniform, combat or dress, thread and medal accurate.
Glancing back at the full house during the standing ovation, I saw the faces of fellow cinephiles and Kubrickians, young and old, smiling with approval, alongside couples out for a laugh with Alan Partridge. I wondered aloud how many of them hadn’t seen the original. My partner looked at me sheepishly, "I haven’t. And I loved it."
We hugged it out in the stalls as we swayed to Vera Lynn.
On the Tube afterwards, I wondered what would Stanley Kurbrick and the boys would make of all this? I remembered an empty box seat, situated to the left of the stage. That’s where Stanley would be. Every day, every performance, giving notes, screaming directions in the middle of the play, audiences be damned, getting every laugh just right.
Dr Strangelove is at the Bord Gais Energy Theatre from 5th - 22nd February 2025 - find out more here.
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