Noel Coward Theatre
Steve Coogan triumphed as four different characters but for many critics, the show didn’t quite take off. Although acknowledged as funny, the script by Armando Iannucci and Sean Foley was criticised by some for being lightweight and timid. The large-scale show is based on Stanley Kubrick’s 1984 satirical film about war-hungry Americans on the brink of nuclear war. Inevitably many of the critics referred to the beloved original in detail and were disappointed that the stage version was different to the original film.
[Links to full reviews are included but a number are behind paywalls and therefore may not be accessible]
Broadway World’s Gary Naylor (5★) praised the adaptors for their decision not to update the story but rather ‘to recreate the movie on stage. That may be a safer creative choice… but the raw material is so very strong that its power is barely diminished 60 years on.’ He underestimated his fellow critics’ capacity to find fault when he said this choice will offer ‘fewer opportunities for disappointed diehard fans to kvetch or identify the instances when the jokes were not as good’. He was in awe of the star: ‘Coogan’s energy is astonishing … he draws on every element of his comic heritage from voices, to pratfalls, to character work, to farce’. He pointed out, ‘There’s wonderful work wherever you look on stage. Giles Terera holds General Turgidson’s bloodlust in check just sufficiently to avoid toppling into caricature, his eyes worth the ticket price alone (some of it at least).’
Marianka Swain reviewing for London Theatre (4★) found the show ‘explosively funny’. She appreciated ‘the tone of Foley’s assured production, which easily flips between Airplane!-style genre-busting farce and alarmingly resonant commentary on humanity’s reckless self-destructiveness.’ Of Steve Coogan, she said, ‘the real treat is his white-haired, wildly camp, extravagantly accented former-Nazi scientist Dr Strangelove…It’s absolutely hysterical.’
Neil Norman in the Express (4★) declared, ‘Sean Foley maintains the tension and the comedy throughout with remarkable nimbleness’. He praised Hildegard Bechtler’s design: ‘Best of all, the arrival of a B-52 bomber that noses its way onto the stage against a video backdrop of clouds is genuinely impressive.’ ‘But,’ he concluded, ‘it’s Coogan’s triumph’.
The Stage’s Dave Fargnoli (4★)was impressed: ‘Iannucci and Foley retain the film’s subversive spirit, but downplay its nihilism, juxtaposing gloriously silly punchlines with a building sense of unease’. As for the star: ‘Coogan displays boundless energy and impeccable comic timing.’ He also praised ‘Hildegard Bechtler’s unfussy, impactful sets’ and ‘Giles Terera channels a fascinatingly chaotic energy’.
Alice Saville in The Independent (3★) thought it was ‘a lovable but overly reverential approach to a film classic’. Despite criticising the production’s timidity, she found the humour ‘evergreen, prickling with ingenious wordplay and sickly surrealism’.
Sarah Crompton at WhatsOnStage (3★) also found it timid: ‘It’s entertaining but never quite as savage as you expect.’ She found ‘there’s something strangely effortful about this adaptation’. However, ‘It’s hard to fault either the comic virtuosity of Steve Coogan’ and ‘Foley’s direction keeps up the hysterical pace’.
Andrzej Lukowski in Time Out (3★) found, ‘For the most part it’s funny because it’s very cognisant of why the film was funny – the dialogue is relentlessly amusing, and the characters are a dream.’ He continued, ‘it’s a slick stage tribute to a beloved 70-year-old movie that captures the reasons why it was a hit but less so the reasons why it’s a masterpiece.’
The Guardian’s Arifa Akbar (3★) was moderately enthusiastic: ‘if this show is anything, it is fun. And Coogan fans most certainly get bang for their buck.’
The Times’ Clive Davis (3★) called the production ‘stolid’ and ‘a decent star vehicle for Steve Coogan’. For Rachel Halliburton at The Arts Desk (3★) ‘the humour doesn’t always detonate in the way it should’.
Sarah Hemming in the Financial Times (3★) felt ‘the satire doesn’t bite as it might and the comedy sometimes feels rather effortful, as if the company felt the need to push it’. She wondered if ‘a slightly more maverick, shoestring approach — something along the lines of Operation Mincemeat — might have given the staging a little more sting.’
One of the most damning reviews came from the Telegraph’s Claire Allfree (2★). She found it ‘trapped between the film’s formidable legacy and an inability to recreate it anew theatrically.’ She said it ‘serves up a knockabout production marked by a contrasting refusal to take its subject seriously. With Coogan on full power, this is not necessarily always a problem.’ She specified, ‘Hildegard Bechtler’s set exemplifies the problem – there’s the odd nod to the original, notably the War Room’s circular overhead light, but it settles mainly for perfunctory designs in regulation 1960s grey‘. In conclusion, she said, ‘The laughter should come at sickening cost. Foley, by contrast, just wants you to have a good time.’
In the i (2★), Fiona Mountford also criticised the show’s lack of seriousness compared with the film: ‘Whereas Kubrick has pitch-black comedy intercutting a mood of gravitas, Foley unwisely has occasional serious moments raising their heads above cheap jokes’.
For Dominic Maxwell in The Sunday Times (2★) it was ‘a fatal jollying up of material that needs to be played in earnest’ even if ‘Coogan is never less than good’. The Observer‘s Susannah Clapp (2★) was disappointed: ‘Covetable comic talents have set themselves not to invent but to replicate. What a waste of imagination…This doesn’t look like a visionary glimpse at a future madness but a tepid cartoon of what is actually happening.’
Critics’ Average Rating 3.0★
Value Rating 33 (Value rating is the Average Critic Rating divided by the typical ticket price)
Dr Strangelove is at Noel Coward Theatre, until 25 January 2025 (then at Bord Gais Energy Theatre, Dublin, 5-22 February 2025). Buy tickets directly here.
Read Paul Seven’s 4 star review of Dr Strangelove here
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