Doctor Strangelove theater review – a triumphant look at Kubrick

It feels like there couldn’t be a better time to recover Doctor Strangelove. When Kubrick’s film was released in the mid-1960s, a long alternative title How I learned to stop worrying and love the bomb must have felt like someone dared to go to the main line before anyone else was even willing to make a joke. It was released at the very beginning of a new wave of Cold War fear. As the Vietnam War escalated and global tensions between the Powers and the Soviet Union continued to flare, anxiety about any kind of conflict took on a new level of fear in the post-1945 world, which saw the use of nuclear weapons against Hiroshima and Nagasaki. usher in a new era of terrifying possibilities in war.

But basically, Doctor Strangelove there are a story about stupid people in power. It begins with an out-of-control United States Air Force general, General Ripper, launching a pre-emptive nuclear strike on Russia, using a certain loophole rule that allows the underdogs to override even the president. Now, in Trump’s world, characters like John Hopper’s Ripper feel as prescient as ever.

He is a comedic character, yes, as the audience laughs at his unwavering self-righteous stupidity. But it also becomes one of many roles on the show that is reinvigorated with new meaning and cultural understanding, as we now live in yet another era where the madmen seem to be in power, and they have the nuclear codes.

I predicted that the story of inept people trying to defuse a nuclear crisis caused by sheer stupidity would seem more relevant today than ever, especially under the leadership of It’s thick creator Iannucci. My real curiosity, however, was whether the adaptation could successfully recreate the duality of Kubrick’s original film. The challenge would be to balance the multiple settings and characters with the tense, purposeful atmosphere of the film, which expertly squeezes nearly an hour of intense tension into a tight 94-minute running time.

Mostly I wondered how anyone could to direct what Peter Sellers did in this film. In the 1964 film, Kubrick offered Sellers not only the titular nuclear expert and alleged ex-Nazi Dr. Strangelove, but also the opposing character of US President Merkin Muffley and Captain Mandrake of the RAF office. Steve Coogan not only took on all three of these roles, but added a third as Major JT Kong, the pilot with the iconic bomb scene. This is a bold move. Trying to play three roles on stage, navigating costume changes and three very different accents and characters is challenging enough, so to add a fourth is incredibly impressive.

But just as the film was a testament to Sellers’ talent, this new play is an absolute shrine to Coogan. There is hardly a moment when he would not be on stage in one or another of his characters. The switches were handled masterfully, using stunt doubles to keep the president in a war room setting even when Coogan switched to Dr. Strangelove, and using pre-recorded clips to allow his various characters to communicate.

It never missed a beat and never missed a beat as all four characters were given the same level of attention to detail as four wildly different but equally thorough and interesting figures. No role won; his Strangelove was utterly goofy and sinister at the same time, his President was fascinating, his Mandrake was embarrassingly cute, and his Kong was suitably insane. His performance is a triumph, and it’s clear that an almost incredible amount of work and preparation has gone into it. Undoubtedly, it is due to Coogan’s talent that the series is successful.

But around Doctor Strangelove handled with such poignancy amid the humor. The dark comedy of the original is perfectly translated to the stage for a laugh-a-minute show that will keep you entertained from start to finish. The jokes understand their shelf life and end before they get overdone, and the script balances iconic lines from the original with new, modernized material for a new audience and format.

On every level, from the staging to the absurd needle-dropping musical moments, it’s clear that every effort has been made to create a production that matches and honors the impending source material, while updating it enough to create something new that’s exciting and crafted for the stage. It takes Kubrick’s world and transforms it in a way that is both an homage to the classic and a bold new take by a team of experts in the world of black comedy. So it’s opus upon opus.

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