Stanley Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove - Noel Coward Theatre

I really liked the line about

Has anyone been in the boxes for this? There’s some single seats in the dress boxes going at £35 but I’m going to assume the discount means the view is more restricted than usual?

Never been in one of the boxes here but Seatplan seems to suggest it’s generally fine.

How would you guys rate it for Iannucci fans?

I love Iannucci's work--I've seen every episode of The Thick of It and Veep multiple times, and I love In the Loop and The Death of Stalin, too. Would you say there's a lot of that kind of humor?  I'm asking because I'll have to stay another day in London if I want to catch this play, and what's holding me back is I don't love the movie, which I find kind of heavy handed and unfunny. So I'd love to hear from Iannucci lovers about how they found the humor. Thanks! 

I'm with you as an Armando Iannucci fan ("The Thick of It" and "Death of Stalin" in particular) -- that said, if I didn't know of his involvement, I wouldn't have guessed it. 

From my perspective, the play is mostly a straight adaptation of the original film -- some flourishes and changes here and there, but mostly quite straightforward.  For me, even as a massive fan of the film, the faithful adaptation was a bit of a disappointment (and I wonder from reading other posts if maybe it's better if one hasn't seen the movie?) 

None of this is to take away from the clever staging and Coogan's brilliance.  But for me, I wish the material had been updated more as it sometimes felt a bit more like an imitation of the film/karaoke, rather than something something fresh like Iannucci's best work.

LOVED this!

I agree with the comments that this is much funnier than the film, yet not quite as sinister.

It's brilliantly staged, it adapts the film faithfully (I haven't seen the film recently but I've seen it at least 4 times in my lifetime, including in a cinema) and it adds about a half hour of extra material, all of which seems to be comedic.

The comedy is hit and miss, more hit than miss, but confidently executed with the best cast you could possibly hope for, across the board, for this type of material.

Steve Coogan's Dr. Strangelove is the funniest character by far (all hits, no misses), followed by Coogan's General Kong character, followed by John Hopkins's General Jack Ripper.

Some spoilers follow. . .

The original film premiered about a year after the Cuban Missile Crisis, when the world really did come close to nuclear midnight, so it's not surprising that the bitter terror of the satire was more on Kubrick's mind than broad comedy.

This show is incredibly faithful to the tone of the original filmic material, but in the added material, they are more broad comedy Zucker Brothers (Airplane/The Naked Gun/etc) than Kubrick.

For example, John Hopkins's General Ripper (my third funniest character) has a booming dumb deadpan delivery that is the best Leslie Nielsen I have seen since Nielsen passed away. The lines are obviously pure Leslie Nielsen ("They're stupid but they're clever with it") and Hopkins is the best person for booming dumb deadpan delivery that I can possibly think of.

Peter Sellers's Dr Strangelove character was the only genuinely funny character in the movie, with his uncontrollable wheelchair and mechanical arm, his cod German accent and his furtive hiding of his obvious Nazi past and sympathies. Coogan is just as funny as Sellers, but the part is deliciously expanded so that he gets to do MUCH more of this! I laughed every time his Dr. Strangelove implicated himself in some terrible thing and then desperately distanced himself from it with the understated catchphrase "Zat was a dreadful business" and other repeated such catchphrases lol. The physical schtick with the mechanical arm, constantly inadvertently siegheiling, for example, and having to be restrained by Coogan's other arm, is brilliantly done. In fact, Dr. Evil though it may be, it was all so funny I was left wanting more of the character.

Coogan's General Kong was my second favourite character, making all his appearances in a marvellous giant plane nose/flying plane projection hybrid. Coogan captures the gung ho unstoppability of such a gung ho war pilot, complete with yeehaw cowboy Southern accent, and total commitment to broad comedy lines like "She's prime cut beef. . . Treat her with respect."

Coogan has two other characters that are less funny, with his US President very much the conduit for most of the plot and more of a straight man.

His Captain Mandrake, however, trapped in a room with plot catalyst, General Ripper, is actually fairly funny in a Kings-English-ennunciated Hugh-Lawrie-in-Blackadder-reacts-to-preposterous-situations sort of way. Where Sellers's Mandrake was paralytic with fear, Coogan gets laughs out of loudly and precisely spelling out every absurd plot twist.

Other than Coogan and Hopkins, Giles Terera is good value as General Turgidson, crowded around "The Big Board" (showing war planes in flight) with the President and his minions, stating the obvious with dry military understatement ("General Ripper has exceeded his authority") and getting inappropriately over-excited when General Kong is executing militarily manoeuvres effectively.

All in all though, the whole cast do everything they could possibly do with the comedic material, and when it misfires, it's not the execution of the joke but the joke itself that is weak.

This is actually a timely show, with Trump, who moved the nuclear clock closer to midnight by blowing the Iranian Nuclear deal, having a fifty fifty chance of getting back into the White House in two weeks.

It's also a show that has some wonderfully performed musical numbers (We open with an amusing ensemble "Try a Little Tenderness," for example), and I could have done with even more from Penny Ashmore's Vera Lynn, so good is she when she does show up. I loved when "Johnny Comes Marching Home," the old Civil War Battle song appeared as elevator music lol.

All in all, this is great, funny and scary. It milks every laugh from the source material and adds many more. The flaw is that we expect even more than that because for some reason the nuclear scares no longer scare us as much as they should. We've become complacent and this show does its bit to fix that, and if he gets in, Trump, unrestrained by all the gatekeepers he had in his first administration, may scare us even more. Let's hope he doesn't, even if his victory would make the show more prescient.

4 stars from me, and could be 4 and a half by press night with a few more laughs.

This reassures me about my A17 seat. I had wondered about trying to switch up for the balcony but was keen to be up close of the two cheaper options. 

Overall thoughts is that I had a really good time with this. Agree with everything said above, in that the majority of the new jokes are very good but there are a few that very clearly don’t land (the whole fish subplot needs to be dropped it never gets a laugh and is kind of thankless to the actor)

Ripper steals all his scenes from Coogan, and deservedly so he’s absolutely hilarious. I agree Coogan is best at Strangelove. He takes time to warm up as Mandrake (who feels extremely Alan Partridge especially as the show goes along), and his President isn’t as good as Sellers.

There’s a joke about Jerusalem that hurts more than is funny in that it’s almost too topical. But it deserves to stay because it elicits winces for the right reasons. (Before anyone gets cross, it doesn’t come down on either side, the joke is literally ‘if we give them Jerusalem then we can make everyone happy!’.

My main criticism is the ending. It feels weirdly rushed and doesn’t come to as much of a crescendo as the movie does.

The bomb dropping and Kong riding it down is a screen projection, which feels weirdly cheesy. When it happens in the film it’s quite eerie with him screaming ‘yeehaw!’ into the void -, but here it’s very much played for laughs and it takes away some of the gravity.

In the movie (from what I remember) Strangelove becomes increasingly more manic and basically regresses to his time as a nazi - his hand increasingly attacking him as he struggles to resist nazi rhetoric until he finally stands up and shouts ‘mein fuhrer I can walk!’

In this version, his hand attacks him once in an earlier scene, and then in the rushing around of them trying to open the bunker floor hatch he stands up shouts ‘I can walk!’ and then the scene kind of continues around him.

It just doesn’t feel enough like the world is genuinely ending, it’s not BLEAK enough. The rest of the show can stay as is, but the ending needs to be bleaker and more consequential.

I realise in listing it out it sounds like I didn’t enjoy it, but up to the ending it’s all gold (apart from the fish bit) and I highly recommend it.

Edit: additional thoughts looking at other people’s posts on here - I agree the prerecorded lines when Coogan’s characters are on stage at the same time sound prerecorded and slightly tinny. They need to find a better way of doing it that doesn’t take you out of the moment.

My double show day concluded with a visit to the NC tonight, and you can stick me in the absolutely loved it 5⭐️ camp. A fantastic cast, script and set (both physical as well as a good use of the video screen) and lighting design made for a brilliant night out in the WE that kept me both throughly entertained and laughing for the entire show that I found to be well paced. SC is just spot on here with his multi-roles but as Strangelove it is just at another level of brilliance. Whilst no doubt Steve does a brilliant job, it is many of the other cast’s performances that allow him to be that good and can go toe to toe with him in the comedy acting and at points in the show actually outshine him to get the laughs. Giles Terera and John Hopkins are particular standouts for me. 

Director Sean Foley and his team have done a brilliant job in adapting the film for the stage and the script from Iannucci and Foley works well in keeping the spirit of the classic film whilst adding their own input for a 2024 audience. The extra bits I’d say do work, though as others pointed out the fish joke really doesn’t land that well and either needs a rewrite or just binning. Though on the whole 99.9% of the gags, both visual and verbal landed with both myself and others in tonight’s audience even if some of the material was a little close to current affairs. 

This is a really strong production and would definitely get a repeat visit from me in the future if any extensions are announced in the new year.

Front row for this last night and I'm falling into the "mixed feelings" camp.

First off the front row is fantastic, in fact I wouldn't sit anywhere else for this show. It's almost Cabaret at the Playhouse immersive but a word of warning to those easily startled, there's a lot of dry ice and rifles in this location. I could barely call the front row restricted, there's only two heads on the war room table you can't see and then Steve's face in the aerial raid. I certainly wouldn't pay £205 premium for this show which was the row behind me and there were seven or eight empty seats behind me in Row B??

The show itself - sorry but it just didn't grab me as it should. I'm a huge Kubrick fan but his unique mystique and magic is missing here. The dialogue and delivery reminded me Channel 4's 1987 "Saturday Live" if they decided to do a Strangelove skit but it's a fussy script and easy to lose track if you're not listening closely. The visuals however were bang on and it was a real thrill feeling as if you were in that war room.
However I also expected a 1960s vibe and that was very sadly missing and a real letdown. I hated the opening number A Little Tenderness as it was performed akin to the Andrew Strong version from The Commitments not the glorious big band British strings of Laurie Johnson integral to the film.

Coogan was excellent but he reminded me of Andy Warhol in a wheelchair not Sellers/Strangelove. However Giles Terera was a standout and the only cast member I felt understood the unique Kubrick style.

Three out of five.

Finally caught this.

What a dud of a production. A laughter free zone. Thank god it’s short, but having watched till the end, I wish I left at the interval.

All this money and effort and this is the best they can do? The only bright spot was John Hopkins who was inspired. Steve Coogan didn’t make me laugh once. Giles Tererra meh.

The ‘quick’ changes were painfully slow and the covering of them highly obvious.

1 star.

Was there last night along with a lot of press, and have to report that it's largely a damp squib and the mid-stalls vibe towards it was pretty "meh" - several walked at the interval as, I confess, was tempting to me as well. The deadpan rat-a-tat comic delivery palls after about 10 minutes, as does the mock-seriousness, and only Coogan's wheelchair-bound Dr S lifts proceedings every time he makes another demented entrance. The set manages to look both expensive and ugly, and the show mostly settles for making obvious contemporary nods (the US supreme court, election fraud etc) more appropriate to an SNL skit. There was an attempt at a standing O at the end but it didn't gain much traction. Go for Dr S himself; the rest is silence.

Standing up?