Stanley Kubrick’s classic black comedy and political satire, Dr Strangelove or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb, premiered in 1964 at the height of the Cold War and the Cuban Missile Crisis. Sixty years on, it could be argued that, with wars going on in Ukraine and Gaza, plus a divisive American election, the movie is still relevant. A high spot is the top military brass sitting round a huge circular table discussing unemotionally which city they should bomb. I still remember Peter Sellars as the American president on the phone talking to his Soviet counterpart and how funny it was because he played it absolutely straight. The film has been turned into a play by Armando Iannucci and Sean Foley and the question is quite simple: is it as good as Kubrick’s film? The answer, sadly, is a big no. The performances by Peter Sellars, Gorge C Scott and Stirling Hayden had a far greater impact on screen in black and white close-up and so did Ken Adam’s huge designs for the war room. The film was also much more phallic. Sellars played three characters: a British RAF officer, an American President and a crazy German scientist in a wheelchair. Steve Coogan plays the same three roles plus the bomber pilot who rides the nuclear bomb to destruction as if he were a cowboy at a rodeo. Coogan is never as good as Sellars was in any of the roles. The audience enjoys his performance most when he is showing Dr Strangelove’s inability to control his black-gloved hand which constantly wants to give a Nazi salute. John Hopkins, cast as the mad American general who launches a nuclear attack on Russia and starts World War Three, gets the play off to a promising start, which is never realised. Sean Foley’s main innovation, and highly effective it is too, is to add dance movement to the songs, “Try A Little Tenderness” and the iconic Vera Lynn number “We’ll Meet Again”, which open and close the production. If you have never seen Stanley Kubrick’s film, my advice would be to see the film rather than the stage adaptation. I would also recommend Sidney Lumet’s film, Fail Safe, which likewise was released in 1964 and has Henry Fonda as the American President in exactly the same Cold War situation; but with the major difference that it takes it absolutely seriously. To learn more about Robert Tanitch and his reviews, click here to go to his website.
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