DR STRANGELOVE
THURSDAY 5TH JUNE | 7.30PM | TRINITY THEATRE
SYNOPSIS
Seven-time BAFTA Award-winner Steve Coogan plays four roles in the world premiere stage adaptation of Stanley Kubrick’s comedy masterpiece Dr. Strangelove.
This explosively funny satire, about a rogue U.S General who triggers a nuclear attack, is led by a world-renowned creative team including Emmy Award-winner Armando Iannucci and Olivier Award-winner Sean Foley.
Stanley Kubrick’s dark, delicious Cold War satire turns 60 this year. This assured, imaginative stage version brings his apocalyptic film bang up to date.
We’re still in 1964, in the aftermath of the Cuban Missile Crisis. Sixty years on, Kubrick’s terrifying question still resonates: could a single madman trigger a nuclear war?
The script follows Kubrick’s screenplay closely, but there are new jokes that fit seamlessly into his story. This Dr Strangelove is more overtly comic, but it remains faithful to his vision.
The shining star of Kubrick’s movie was Peter Sellers, giving his greatest film performance in three contrasting comic roles. when I heard Steve Coogan had been cast in the title role I felt sure he’d be a perfect fit.
Coogan is a brilliant mimic, and he surely could have done an immaculate imitation of Sellers if he’d wanted to. Instead, he dares to do something quite different. His Dr Strangelove is delightfully, hilariously camp, which somehow makes him even more sinister than Sellers’ colder villain. Yet the role that impressed me most was his hapless Captain Mandrake. In a story severely short of sympathetic characters, he infuses this RAF officer with fragility and humanity, giving us someone to root for.
Sellers played three parts in the film. In the play, Coogan plays four: not only Dr Strangelove, Captain Mandrake and the US President, but also Major Kong, the gung-ho pilot who drops the bomb. Unlike Sellers in the movie, Coogan has to switch between these roles at lightning pace. The costume changes are incredibly quick, but what’s even more impressive is the way he morphs so smoothly between four entirely different characters.
The show's a joy.
And even though Dr Strangelove is full of laughter, like all the best comedies its central message is profound. ‘As fewer and fewer people find solace in religion as a buffer between themselves and the terminal moment, I actually believe that they unconsciously derive a kind of perverse solace from the idea that in the event of a nuclear war, the world dies with them,’ said Kubrick. ‘God is dead, but the bomb endures.
