FringeReview UK 2025

Dr Strangelove

NT Live

Genre: Adaptation, American Theater, Comedy, Costume, Dark Comedy, Drama, Farce, Film, Live Music, Mainstream Theatre, New Writing, Political, Satire, Theatre

Venue: Brighton Odeon Cinema

Festival: FringeReview UK

Low Down

Review

Seeing this in colour is like being irradiated. Armando Iannucci and director Sean Foley have co-adapted Stanley Kubrick’s 1964 black-and-white masterpiece Dr Strangelove for our times, broadcast from NT Live after its Noel Coward run. In 3D as it were, it seems horribly topical. Then there’s Stephen Coogan. This time he manages four, not Peter Sellars’ three roles, with spectacular costume-changes.

Still set in 1964 (1961, according to one character) there’s nods to the future in this otherwise faithful adaptation. Soviet President Kissov is more paranoid here. Gone is President Muffley’s “I’m more worried than you Dmitri, OK I’m just as worried as you Dmitri.” Names are further satirised, swearing’s loosed, idiom (like video) subtly updated.

There’s a theatrical sharpening and in Hildegard Bechtler’s magnificent set some coups. Constrained by theatre, it’s not a mobile one, leading to complaints the whole’s a bit static. But I defy anyone not to be wowed by the War Room’s careful gradations of lit maps (not too modern) and panels with Akhila Krishnan’s projection design providing a B52 whilst Bechtler pops on a cockpit nose for three characters to ride to Russia in. Lit with subtle War-Room effects by Jessica Hung Han Yun, sound from Ben and Max Ringham comes into its own at the opening and close, with Vera Lynn (Penny Ashmore) apparating in Han Yun’s halo.

One thing’s not updated: shapeshifting comedic talent. Peter Sellars’ genius is so inimitable only Steve Coogan could take it on: he triumphs here. Mainlining the eponymous Dr Strangelove with… Musk-y salutes as his mechanical arm gets excited into Naz jerks, he never over-acts Sellars’ over-acting; with his repeated “that was a terrible time” accumulating as an act of willed nostalgia for Nazi Germany. Coogan uncannily brings dead-eyed reason to Strangelove, with a glare previously reserved for Jimmy Savile.

As Group-Captain Mandrake, someone muttered Coogan riffs on the late Duke of Edinburgh’s voice. It’s a different take on Sellars’ down-at-heel British desperation. A Japanese-tortured ex-Spitfire pilot now kow-towing to a special serfdom with the U.S. Kubrick, but far more Iannucci and Foley, underscore the British character’s tiny wiggle-room in the face of a feudal U.S.

In this case it’s the renamed General Ripper. John Hopkins is almost unrecognizable: the psychotic – or just American – biblical evangelist of sperm, essence, the end of days. It seems nearer now, as such people lap at the White House. Hopkins’ bullish paranoia here magnificently overbears Coogan’s Mandrake, and these scenes (in a slightly reconfigured set) are his, as he sets off B52s to start WW3. Then Coogan’s character has to cope with his batshit supplanter Colonel Bat Guano (Ben Turner) in a gem of a cameo, preventing Mandrake from getting the recall code he’d deducted, to the President till nearly too late.

Coogan angsts as reasonable President Muffley, a voice of sanity and quick-witted reason: less neurotic than Kubrick’s incarnation. With Muffley more in hock to Kissov’s lunacy, you wonder where the chain of paranoia ends.

Possibly not with a human. There’s the Soviet’s Doomsday bomb (admired by Strangelove), set to automatically nuke the whole world at the hint of a bomb.

Some of Muffley’s more wibbly moments are gifted to profoundly nervous Faceman (Mark Hadfield), pushed-about Frank (Richard Dempsey), and irrelevant, even more servile Canadian General Staines (Ben Deery).

Supremely though, General Turgidson (Giles Terera) bestrides the War Room, a Pentagon cousin of Hopkins’ Ripper, whom he admires. Terera delights in a paroxysm of coiled militarism. One that thrills to the prospect of war as God’s game. Even faced with annihilation Terera hymns the synchronised beauty of MAD.

And some of Turgidson’s own mad emerges when he describes that rogue pilot – who here gets the recall – “whip-smart”. It’s only in Act Two that Coogan’s Major TJ Kong appears, bulling up his face and berating his hapless juniors. Lincoln (Dhamesh Patel) is acquiescent till near the end terror appears on his face. Jefferson (Oliver Alvin-Wilson) is made of sharper, sterner stuff: the top Harvard student hand-picked but for ten years a co-pilot who nevertheless in this version works out a signal as constituting the Recall. Then what?

Sergeant (Alex Stoll), Mabli Gwynnne, Tom Kelsey, Daniel Norford, Adam Sina complete a cast that twice become a chorus line. Musical director Candida Caldicott has as much fun as you can do under the shadow of mad-men. And Ashmore’s invocation of Vera Lynn is mesmerising.

There are moments when the spectacle looks West-End: that first chorus, and the film’s loony freewheeling can’t be replicated. But like Kubrick’s classic, this is a play of caricatures. Coogan reigns supreme, and a cast like Hopkins then Terera are a gift to both Coogan and the show. It’s true this isn’t as theatrically spectacular as something with the Olivier’s resources, though the B52 and war maps run it close. The adaptation sticks to Kubrick, but hasn’t been given sufficient credit for subtly nudging us into 2025. And that, surely is the point.

Till June 19^th at various national cinemas, and subsequently on NT LiveatHome.

Casting Director Amy Ball CDG, Illusions Chris Fisher, Movement Director Lizzi Gee, Associate Director Dewi Johnson, Associate Costume Designer Laura Hunt, Associate Lighting Designer Lucy Adams, Associate set Designer Al Turner, Sound System Designer Sam Clarkson, Wig Supervisor Kat Elizabeth, Props Supervisor Chris Marcus and Jonathan Hall, Musical Director Candida Caldicott

Published March 28, 2025March 28, 2025 by Simon Jenner