Dr. Strangelove West End review – Steve Coogan delights in the war room

A black comedy about the end of the world feels like appropriate entertainment for our anxious and frightening times. And there’s no doubting the genuine admiration for Stanley Kubrick’s classic 1964 film embodied in this faithful stage adaptation by Sean Foley and Armando Iannucci.

It’s hard to fault the comedic virtuosity of Steve Coogan, who is a cut above the late, great Peter Sellers in the film, playing four characters including the outrageous scientific genius Dr. Strangelove.

But despite all the goodwill and laughs, there’s something strangely strenuous about this adaptation. There’s a sense that it’s made just because it can, rather than to bring some particularly new satirical insight to the story.

So the story begins in Cold War territory, when General Ripper, the American commander of the Burpelson Air Force (played with rapidly escalating wide-eyed madness by John Hopkins) becomes convinced that the “cunning” Russians have launched an attack despite all evidence to the contrary. “The nature of a sneak attack is that it is sneaky,” he argues with absurd logic, endorsing an unstoppable nuclear retaliation.

His second-in-command, a wimpy RAF officer named Captain Mandrake, who tries with increasing desperation to talk him out of it, gives Coogan his first role, full of furrowed eyebrows and old-fashioned, gosh-for-golly language. Then, as the action shifts to the War Room in the President’s nuclear bunker, he in turn becomes the hapless President Muffley (the clues are always in the weak swear words) who is on the phone with his Russian counterpart in a attempt to spread the information. crisis. Until he discovers that the Soviets have invented a machine that will destroy the planet and all its inhabitants.

Coogan has the most fun as the other two characters in the game: as the wheelchair-bound Strangelove in a wild white wig, he makes the most of the character’s tendency to praise the Nazis while his arm inadvertently shoots up. While Sellers turned the greeting into a joke, Coogan paused in the small silence afterwards, where he recanted his previously expressed opinion.

Finally, he is Major TJ Kong, the enthusiastic commander of the B52 bomber on its way to its target, who refuses to accept any possibility of recall, and rants about the Russian air smelling of “fear and potatoes” while the American atmosphere is confusing. one of freedom, and with unhinged joy driving the bomb to its destination.

All this is expertly realized on Hildegard Bechtler’s monochrome set, which combines traditional structures of desks and airplane cockpits with Jessica Hung Han Yun’s lighting and Akhila Krishnan’s cleverly realistic projections to create an impressive range of environments. Ben and Max Ringham provide an atmospheric soundscape while Foley’s own direction keeps up the hysterical pace, although the second act is noticeably more gripping than the first, perhaps because doomsday is quickly approaching.

There are also enthusiastic and sharp performances Giles Terera as General Turgidson, a man who is barely in control and can never try to calm a situation without inflaming it, and Tony Jayawardena as Russian Ambassador Bakov, whose world-weary realism contrasts with the rising panic.

The extreme masculinity of the piece is leavened by a few jokes about just that, and by a few funny but strangely out-of-place musical routines. The script is as sharp as you’d expect from Iannucci, but overall he resists the attempt to update the action, save for one joke in which President Huffley groans that he wishes the other guy had won. “He still thinks so,” comes the response.

It’s a pointed moment in a piece that falls short for them. It’s entertaining, but never as wild as you might expect.