Dr. Strangelove, National Theatre Live review: a genuine blast

‘Gentlemen. You can’t fight in here. This is the war room.’

For my money, it’s the snappiest joke in Stanley Kubrick’s B52 bomber jet-black satire of foolish politicians and the military might(y dumb) that backs them into the apocalypse, Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964).

Uttered by Peter Seller’s flustered American president Merkin Muffley (the work’s full of hilariously pointed monikers), he’s trying to get a handle on why a pre-emptive strike against Russian targets has been authorised without his say-so, thereby heating up the Cold War to nuclear. The men who have come to fisticuffs are the very English Peter Bull’s supposedly Russian ambassador, Alexi de Sadesky, and George C Scott’s bullish American general ‘Buck’ Turgidson.

While the president’s reaction goes to his determination for peace over oblivion, it only serves to underline how powerless he truly is to prevent the machinations of a madman – Sterling Hayden’s Brigadier General Jack D Ripper holed up at Burpelson Air Force Base – from spiralling into mutually assured destruction.

Dr. Strangelove: Ring the alarm

That fighting in the war room line carries over directly from Kubrick’s genius, one of the greatest films of all end times, to a new stage play adapted by the high king of contemporary satire, Armando Iannucci. The brains behind The Thick of It, Veep and The Death of Stalin, the Glaswegian has a grand way of nailing the folly of the folks in charge.

Watch the trailer for National Theatre Live’s Dr. Strangelove

Debuting on London’s Noël Coward Theatre stage and taking to the world via National Theatre Live’s screen, Dr. Strangelove is directed by Olivier Award-winner Sean Foley. He casts Iannucci’s Alan Partridge co-conspirator Steve Coogan in all three of Sellers’ film roles – President Muffley, RAF Group Captain Lionel Mandrake, wrestling with Ripper, and the bionic-handed, allegedly former Nazi scientist of the title. Coogan takes on a fourth for good measure, also depicting infamous cowboy hat-wearing, payload-riding B52 pilot Major TJ Kong whom Sellers had lobbied for, ultimately losing out to Slim Pickens.

Of course, Kubrick, cinematographer Gilbert Taylor and editor Anthony Harvey had fun with perspective, blocking and cuts to ease Sellers’ way. On stage, these swaps, including between Strangelove and Muffley in the War Room but also leaping across locations, require good old-fashioned theatre magic and heroic athleticism from Coogan.

That these mad dashes are played for knowing laughs indicates Iannucci’s tone shift. While Kubrick’s film – co-written with Terry Southern and Red Alert author Peter George – is grimly funny, this (filmed) stage show leans far more heavily into the comedy, upping the whimsical wordplay and pulling its punches in favour of a much cosier catastrophe that never quite rings the two minutes to midnight alarm.

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Dr. Strangelove: All the single ladies

Some elements of the original film mirror where we’re at now in terrifying ways, including the derangement of those in charge of the States plus Ripper’s paranoid fear of poisoned water and of being impersonated – hello bots, AI and the general proliferation of fake news. But Foley’s gentler take can’t quite make this take off as it should.

And while Iannucci inserts a few contemporary nods, including a throwaway line addressing the crisis in Gaza that’s a bit too glib, that barb lands better than intrusively anachronistic language deployed elsewhere. Stuff like referring to Elvis fans as hipsters, both dating the play and unmooring it in a way that doesn’t quite fly.

A vaguely pantomime pep might surprise those more used to Iannucci’s grimmer-ended guffaws of the dark timeline variety and Coogan’s acerbically comic brand. The latter certainly has fun with Kong’s gung-ho bro and is particularly ace when hamming it up as Strangelove, unconvincingly trying to Musk his way out of his bionic hand betraying his loyalty to the late Führer. His stiff upper lip Mandrake’s a bit wibblier, compared to the steel of Sellers, as is his Muffley, not quite so amusingly meek on the phone to an unseen Soviet Premier Dimitri Kissov.

Tony Jayawardena, as a plum-suited and actually accented Sadesky, makes the most of the sit-back sly role. Likewise, John Hopkins brings grit to the gar-chomping Ripper, even if his character’s gun-toting mania has been dialled down. As an aside, the insertion of a bible subplot here, absent from the film, doesn’t quite pop.

I’m not convinced concerns over sexism in Tracy Reed’s big-screen bikini-wearing appearance as Turgidson’s secretary, Miss Scott, merits entirely excising the character in a show that features zero women beyond a final musical flourish. Especially since the role reads as a swipe at Turgidson’s type, including the line, “Of course it isn’t just physical. I deeply respect you as a human being.” Given contemporary tweaks elsewhere, couldn’t the war cabinet have edged towards gender parity?

Working with what we’ve got, the real scene-stealing champ is National Theatre Live: Othello star Giles Terera. Flexing his gift for physical comedy and spot-on timing, he successfully retains Turgidson’s bruiser attitude even as his bark is less bitey in Iannucci’s take, blowing the other War Room residents away.

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Dr. Strangelove: Halo

Taking on acclaimed production designer Kenneth Adam’s epic film set is no easy task. As iconic an image as cinema has ever delivered, inspiring countless imitators of the sort that trouble Ripper’s nightmares, re-imagining the War Room is the biggest ask.

So set and costume designer Hildegard Bechtler doesn’t fight it, instead opting for loving homage, rightly so. The luminous halo – plus attendant surtitles – hung over devilishly dim dolts staggering towards planetary annihilation is as powerful here as it ever was.

Combining a giant digital backdrop that deliberately glitches with a malevolent hint of 1984’s all-seeing Big Brother with good old-fashioned projection on swishing curtains, blazing lights and Coogan’s switcheroos, Bechtler and Foley easily sweep us from all the president’s men to Burpelson and back. However, the bomber plane sequences never could match the might of the movie and its momentous montage of mushroom clouds.

While some of the cinematic scale of the story is lost, the theatre craft is top-notch. Centred as the story is on the War Room machinations, it transfers well to a filmed experience via NT Live, as did Jodie Comer-led one-woman show Prima Facie.

Foolhardy fun that’s over in a jiffy, despite a two-hour run time, this Coogan-led take on Dr. Strangelove might not swoop and soar as spectacularly as the Kubrick, but it’s no bomb.

National Theatre Live: Dr. Strangelove is in select cinemas from 24 April.