“WHY NOW?”
The two men behind the new theatrical adaptation of Dr Strangelove – Stanley Kubrick’s classic Cold War satire about nuclear annihilation – are, at this stage, well used to being asked about the relevance of the story for modern audiences.
The original film, which garnered four Oscar nominations and is consistently cited as one of the best comedies of all time, was released at the height of US-Moscow tensions in 1964 – just two years after the Cuban Missile Crisis brought the world to the brink.
The plot, which walks a razor-thin line between comedy and tragedy, centres on attempts to call off a pre-emptive strike on the Soviet Union ordered by a renegade US general.
Sean Foley, director of the new production, reckons escalating global tensions provide a compelling reason for staging the story “in that it has this relevance for now”.
The Thick of It, Veep and Death of Stalin creator Armando Iannucci, who co-adapted the play alongside Foley, agrees that the themes have an “increasing relevance”.
“When we were originally writing it we thought that the nuclear theme was a kindof a metaphor for global warming or for a hundred-and-one other doomsday scenarios. But actually, now it’s no longer a metaphor, it’s actually literal.
“We’re back to the Russian President being a little bit mad and talking about nuclear weapons in a very casual way and about how one little mistake somewhere along the way could set the whole thing off.”
“It’s a testament to Kubrick’s ability to tell a story that just lasts forever.”
The stage adaptation of Strangelove – which sees Steve Coogan juggle four major roles – began previews at London’s Noël Coward Theatre earlier this month. There’ll be a limited run in Dublin’s Bord Gáis Energy Theatre in February.
Foley and Iannucci spoke to The Journal after a screening of the original movie (in which Peter Sellers plays a mere three key roles) at the British Film Institute in London, days before preview performances began.
Both were keen to stress that, despite the pitch black themes, audiences can expect a great night out at the theatre. They may find themselves heading home, as Iannucci has put it throughout their campaign to promote the play, “laughing and afraid”.
Much of the action in the movie, as well as the stage adaptation, takes place on the giant set of the Washington ‘war room’. Ineffectual US President Merkin Muffley is surrounded by a bank of grey generals and advisors as he mounts an increasingly desperate effort to call a halt to the impending armageddon.
The titular doctor – an unhinged former Nazi scientist prone to hysterical monologues and whose uncontrollable left hand jolts into ‘Heil Hitler’ salutes at inopportune moments – steals several scenes.
Sellers played Muffley, Strangelove himself and harried RAF officer Lionel Mandrake in the original. In addition to those three, Coogan is also taking on the role of a maverick US bomber pilot played in the film by Slim Pickins (Pickins primarily acted in westerns at the time – it was rumoured Sellers couldn’t quite nail the accent).
In spite of the stakes, the action plays out more as farce than drama. Given the full title of the original – Dr Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb – it’s probably not giving anything away to mention that things don’t particularly end well.
Watching Coogan switch between roles – sometimes in the space of split seconds – should serve to add to the experience for audiences, according to Iannucci. It’s one of the “theatrical problems” that he and Foley, he said, had to solve as they adapted the original script.
“Peter Sellers could come in one week as Mandrake and another as President Muffley – but on stage how do we do it when we only have one person, making these switches instantaneously?”
Having worked for decades alongside Coogan on their various Alan Partridge projects, Iannucci said he never doubted the star’s ability to pull it off.
Asked how audiences might expect Coogan’s portrayal of the Strangelove character in particular might differ to Sellers’ iconic performance, the two men weren’t giving much away, but did offer a few hints.
Said Iannucci: “The thing that Steve picked up on is that it’s the 1960s so Strangelove, even if he might have had these connections with whatever happened in the forties, he sees himself as an American in the sixties so …. he’s trying to make himself less harsh.”
Foley added: “It is quite interesting … the character that Steve has come up with is someone who is trying to be more friendly but then you sense or feel this very dark core and past to it.”
Mirroring Coogan’s approach, the two writers also had a balance to strike throughout the long process of adapting the original as they worked towards a script that would honour Kubrick’s movie but also generate laughs and create tension in the right places.
“I think the thing that we wanted to take from the film was to still walk that tightrope between drama and comedy, tragedy and dark comedy, with the two happening simultaneously … once we see it in front of an audience we’ll get a sense of where that’s going.”
The new interpretation of the story will be the first adaptation of any Kubrick work in any format. As Foley explained it, the producers behind the show had been attempting to persuade the legendary director’s estate to allow them to stage Strangelove for years.
The producers’ hit US theatre adaptation of another vintage movie satire, Network, won the Kubrick family over. Foley, a veteran theatre director, was tasked with adapting the screenplay. Seeking a co-writer, he said he knew instantly that Iannucci – who he had been friends with for years but had never worked alongside- was the only man for the job.
Before speaking with The Journal, Foley and Iannucci had taken to the stage after the screening of the original movie at the BFI to answer questions about their adaptation – at one point bemusedly answering in the negative when asked if their staged version would also be in black and white.
And while the monochrome approach – for obvious practical reasons – wasn’t really a runner when translating the film for the stage, they decided early in the process that other key elements would remain unchanged. There were no serious discussions about setting the action in the present day or even at a later period in the Cold War.
The two expanded on their approach to the adaptation process in our interview. Discussing the point that there’s only one female speaking role in the original movie, Foley said that – as the story is expressly about men and a certain male outlook – a deliberate choice was made to keep their cast a predominantly male one.
“Partly for that reason – in that it actually is about men”
“The film is, obviously, clearly satire, a comedy on power … but the root of it, or alongside it, conjoined to it, is the satire on a certain type of maleness and a certain type of decision making.”
According to Iannucci: “Men just want to keep their status – feeling threatened is a challenge so they’d rather brazen it out even if that means the end of the world than concede that they’re not quite as important in other peoples’ eyes.”
Before wrapping up, we squeezed in one last question about whether they were concerned about any of the jokes in the play coming too close to the wire and whether they had discussed any possible backlash (the topic of being ‘cancelled’ formed part of the question – and for a fleeting moment the two men adopted the same bemused look that had greeted the audience member’s query, earlier in the night, about the play being in black and white).
“Jokes are the least offensive things you can end up with considering lots of what goes on in the world,” Foley said.
“The sort of political leaders are the ones who can’t take a joke about themselves – in the end they tend to be the most dangerous ones,” Iannucci added.
“I think I’d be more worried about the world being cancelled.”
Dr Strangelove runs in the Bord Gáis Energy Theatre from 5 – 22 February 2025.
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