In September last year, the Stanley Kubrick estate announced that actor, impressionist and comedian Steve Coogan would be taking the lead role (all four of them) in a play of Dr Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb. This is the first ever stage adaptation of Stanley Kubrick’s strident 1964 nuclear comedy and cold war satire. Now on at London’s Noël Coward Theatre, the production has been co-adapted by Sean Foley and Armando Iannucci.
Kubrick’s 1964 film is a Kafkaesque, nightmare comedy. It starred actor and comedian Peter Sellers in three of the four roles now taken up by Coogan (Group Captain Lionel Mandrake, President Merkin Muffley and the eponymous Dr Strangelove).
The film was a product of the British satire boom of the 1960s which included the satirical comedy programme That Was The Week That Was, and Monty Python’s Flying Circus. Kubrick’s film was based on the 1958 novel Two Hours to Doom by Peter George.
