Steve Coogan in Dr Strangelove – Noel Coward Theatre – review

Why Steve Coogan is better than Peter Sellers in Dr Strangelove

★★★★

John Hopkins and Steve Coogan in Dr Strangelove. Photo: Manuel Harlan

I don’t know what’s more spectacular, the production of Dr Strangelove or Steve Coogan‘s triumphant performance as four different characters. He’s hardly ever off stage and he generates most of the laughs. The script has some flaws, but these are far outweighed by the enjoyment gleaned from this magnificent show.

You might be wondering whether a film made in the 1960s about how a nuclear war might be triggered stacks up as a comedy for today. It does creak occasionally but it is funnier and more relevant than you might expect. I’ll return to that but more to the point is that Dr Strangelove is a vehicle for the powerful comic acting of Steve Coogan, following in the footsteps of the film’s star Peter Sellers by playing multiple roles. As well as constantly changing costumes, he is hardly off the stage. He deserves an award for stamina, as well as any others he will deservedly accrue.

The action starts at a US air base in Britain. The hut interior with its massive Venetian blinds, just waiting to be disrupted, is the first of a series of great sets by Hildegard Bechtler (who also designed the set for the current production of Oedipus). We meet the first and possibly the best of four brilliant characters created by Steve Coogan. He’s a RAF Captain Mandrake, shocked that the US commander has launched an unauthorised nuclear attack on Russia. It’s a masterpiece of British reserve, politeness and beating around the bush in the face of the utter madness of General Ripper played hilariously by a cigar-chomping, carpet-chewing and suitably square-jawed John Hopkins.

Steve Coogan and Giles Terera in Dr Strangelove. Photo: Manuel Harlan

Next, we are in a spectacular War Room with a huge electronic map or ‘Big Board’ as they call it working over the scene, showing targets as ‘circles, squares and squiggly bits’. Here, a panicking mix of politicians and military men have gathered in response to the news. Mr Coogan is the level-headed US President Muffley surrounded by war-mongering generals, led by an excellent Giles Terera as General Turgidson, maintaining a stiff military stance but always on the verge of jumping up and down with childish excitement.

Also in the room is Russian Ambassador Bakov (the amusing names keep on coming), played by Tony Jaywardena, who disintegrates from swaggering confidence to paralysing fear as he realises his fate is in the hands of his unpredictable and possibly mad leader.

There’s some excellent sleight of hand when Mr Coogan changes to Dr Strangelove, a former German scientist now masterminding the US nuclear response. He holds down his arm to prevent it making Nazi salutes, always with a reassuring ’I hated that’, while clearly looking forward to a new Reich. Mr Coogan plays down the German fanatic stereotype which makes his explanation of the logic of having automatic responses to the use of nuclear weapons without human intervention, and his casual description of the consequences of a nuclear holocaust as chilling as they are funny.

The third set cleverly recreates a bomber plane. The fuselage and landscape below are recreated impeccably, although I’m not sure how visible it would be from the back of the stalls. Sitting in the cockpit with two other members of the crew is the pilot Major TJ Kong, played by Steve Coogan.

It takes some chutzpah to put yourself up for comparison with the great Peter Sellers but Mr Coogan emerges with at least a draw, and he deserves an extra credit for playing all these parts in the course of two hours. Like Mr Sellers, he avoids going for the obvious laughs which could be gained from exaggerating the accents and mannerisms, and other clowning. Instead, they take the characters seriously and allow the humour to come out of the situation, making it all the more believable.

Steve Coogan outdoes Peter Sellers in one respect. That’s by taking on a fourth role, which the star of the film was unable to do owing to an injury. Again it’s a priceless performance as Major T J Kong, as the pilot reverts to cowboy mode. Despite objections and obstacles, he is determined to carry out the mission, but can he be stopped?

A code that will cancel the bombers is essential but Coogan back as RAF Captain Mandrake and in possession of said code has trouble trying to phone the President because of lack of change. This leads to one of the funniest scenes, as he tries to persuade a US soldier to shoot open a vending machine. To the American, vandalising Coca Cola property is a more serious offence than causing World War 3.

This stage show has been adapted by Armando Iannucci and Sean Foley from a 1964 film that satirised the military strategy of Mutually Assured Destruction- the idea that if all the major powers were armed with nuclear weapons they wouldn’t attack for fear of being destroyed themselves. At the time, hot on the heels of the Cuban Missile Crisis, people were actually preparing for the possibility of a nuclear war. Sixty years later, it hasn’t happened. Not that that makes Dr Strangelove a nostalgic trip down memory lane.

Yes, CND (the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament) is barely mentioned these days and we have become more concerned about the destruction of the planet through pollution and the climate crisis, but the reality is that nuclear weapons have proliferated, making greater than ever the danger of a country, a dictator, or even a terrorist group using them. With an aggressive Putin in power in Russia and an unpredictable President due to take over the US nuclear codes, not to mention nuclear weapons at the disposal of Israel, Pakistan, North Korea and, before long, Iran, this is a timely reminder that it only takes one or two psychopaths with their fingers on the trigger to desolate the world- and how absurd this is.

Giles Terera is excellent as a war-mongering general

Dr Strangelove imagines two such madmen (and the players are all men) setting off a potential nuclear war. In doing so, it exposes fundamental flaws in the macho culture and logic of war that has led them into this corner. So the US generals talk of ‘pre-taliation’, based on the assumption that an accidental attack by them will trigger retaliation and they will need to get in first. It’s satire but it bites deeply into the fanaticism that comes out of the dehumanisation of the opposition.

It’s not a musical but it begins and ends with a chorus line of military personnel dancing to popular songs, the opening number being the most aggressive version of Try A Little Tenderness I’ve ever heard, and ending with Vera Lynn (Penny Ashmore) singing with equal irony the sentimental World War Two song We’ll Meet Again.

The one-liners come thick and fast (‘You can’t fight in here! This is the War Room’) and, thanks to director Sean Foley, the pace rarely lets up. The only problem is that the plot is entirely centred around the question of whether a nuclear war can be prevented. With no subplots or diversions, the humour, never subtle and already dated in parts, becomes progressively predictable: you can only take so many jokes about redneck Americans and the madness of war.

Fortunately, Steve Coogan is magnificent, creating four very different characters and showing perfectly how the best laughs come from taking the comedy seriously. He looked exhausted by the time the curtain came down.

Dr Strangelove can be seen at the Noel Coward Theatre in London’s West End until 25 January 2025, and then at the Bord Gais Energy Theatre from 5 to 22 February 2025. Ticket information here.

Paul was given a review ticket by the producer.

Watch this review on the YouTube channel Theatre Reviews With Paul Seven

October 15, 2024October 20, 2024

Review: Oedipus with Mark Strong and Lesley Manville at Wyndham’s Theatre

A thrilling love story shattered by human fallibility

★★★★★

Lesley Manville and Mark Strong in Oedipus. Photo: Manuel Harlan

I love going to the theatre but I can’t deny that, while they offer the excitement of live performance, many evenings are transitory experiences- good at the time but not that memorable. Then, a production comes along that reminds you why you fell in love with theatre, and why at its best it’s a transcendent experience. A thrilling production like Robert Icke’s Oedipus, adapted from Sophocles‘ Ancient Greek tragedy and starring Mark Strong and Lesley Manville. For two hours, you are not only in the presence of two great actors, you are taken out of the here and now, into a timeless story of human experience.

First, we should pay tribute to Sophocles born over 2500 years ago and possibly the greatest playwright of all time. He wrote around 120 plays. Of the seven that survive, Oedipus, or Oedipus The King, is considered to be his finest. Sophocles provides the core of this production by showing the way Oedipus reacts to being the victim of a situation he only inadvertently caused.

Now, it will come as no surprise to you that the situation is, unbeknownst to him, he has killed his father and married his mother. And, if we didn’t know, we soon do because early on in the play, he meets someone who can foresee the future- Tiresias played by Samuel Brewer as someone frightened by his knowledge and reluctant to impart it. Oedipus, the truth seeker, insists so Tiesias tells him he will discover that he is the killer of his father and the lover of his mother. He laughs it off. After all, his father is still alive and his elderly mother is certainly not his wife.

In Robert Icke‘s interpretation, Oedipus is a modern day politican who, Obama-like, promises to be truthful and transparent- and means it. We meet him on election night, and await his almost certain victory in real time, as a clock counts down the seconds to the result. This is unbearably tense because the time is just a little less than the length of the play, which is without an interval, and which we are pretty sure will end badly

At the very start, Oedipus makes two rash decisions (rash in his advisor’s opinion). As there are doubts about his immigrant origins, he will release his birth certificate. Secondly, because there are rumours about how the last proper ruler King Laius, who was also his wife’s former husband, died 30 years earlier, he will conduct a public investigation. But sometimes the truth can be devastating and his well-intentioned decisions set off the inevitable conclusion.

Robert Icke’s Oedipus at the Wyndham’s Theatre

Everything takes place in one indoor location, the election campaign headquarters. As well as a workplace, it is also the place where Oedipus’ family live. Hildegard Bechtler‘s clean, shiny, white set suggests both a modern office and the temporariness of life, which is an on-going theme of the play. As time ticks away, so the furnishings are gradually removed.

Oedipus’ mother Merope has something important to tell him. We suspect what this will be, but he keeps putting her off. She is played by June Watson as a world-weary but steely old woman. Meanwhile, we get hints of political intrigue when we meet Oedipus’ close advisor Creon, his brother-in-law, played with a certain shiftiness and exasperation by Michael Gould. Oedipus doesn’t trust him, partly because Tiresias has predicted Creon will become leader, and partly because, unlike him, Creon sees the potential dangers of transparency.

Heart bursting drama

Most importantly, we meet Oedipus’ wife, Jocasta, a little older than him, and whom he clearly loves. The passion is still strong even after thirty years: he gives her oral sex on stage and, when interrupted, they go off for a quickie. It’s a love that dominates the play. ‘Love,’ he proclaims, ‘is the only thing that matters in the end’. Like their characters, Mark Strong and Lesley Manville are a match made in heaven: they’re tactile, warm, honest, and at ease with each other. You can feel the erotic charge. Your heart bursts with the knowledge of what is to come, knowledge that will shatter their love story.

Then, there’s the loving family. They may bicker but they are relaxed together. Some of the audience may know that in other plays by Sophocles, the consequences of tonight will play out in further tragedy, including Antigone, which features his daughter, and is currently playing in a hardly recognisable modern version called The Other Place at the National Theatre. It seems we can’t get enough of Sophocles. There’s even another version of Oedipus coming to the Old Vic next year, featuring Rami Malek and Indira Varma.

They will have to do incredibly well to match Mark Strong and Lesley Manville. When they are on stage, you feel you are in the presence of greatness. Mark Strong carries himself with the confidence, strength and arrogance of a leader, upright with jutting jaw, but he is also able to show a full range of emotions from fear to temper to tenderness. Lesley Manville is a sparkling foil to him. She laughs, she’s seductive, she’s protective, she tries to persuade him to leave well alone. When she talks of becoming pregnant at 13 and having the baby taken away, it’s a pin-drop moment of the deepest emotion, and made all the worse because we know who that baby is.

The tension is palpable as Oedipus’ determination to discover and reveal the truth leads him first to connect an accident he was involved in as a young man with the death of his wife’s despicable husband King Laius, and then to the much worse truth about his own origins.

Yes, the coincidences are a bit much, both in Sophocles‘ original and in Robert Icke‘s adaptation, but the ticking clock allows us no time to question the plot. We may not be cursed by the Ancient Greek Gods, but this play tells us we are all trapped by circumstances beyond our control from birth to death. We realise that Oedipus’ tragedy is not that he unknowingly killed his father and married his mother, it’s that his only too human quest for answers, without thought to the consequences of that knowledge, leads him to find out a shocking truth about himself. In a heartbreaking scene, we’re even reminded how different it could have been if he had made other choices.

It all comes back to being human, which I think is at the heart of theatre because of its human scale. There is a scene between Creon and Antigone in which they discuss a riddle, that is in fact the Riddle of The Sphinx, the one which made Oedipus a hero when he solved it. The answer to the riddle is, significantly, a human being.

As Oedipus’ mother says, ‘It was a struggle to get here. A struggle to be here. What can it be but a struggle to leave.’ Sophocles recognised the nature of the human condition, and Robert Icke, as adaptor and director, has laid it out again for us, magnificently.

Oedipus is at the Wyndham’s Theatre until 4 January 2025. Buy tickets direct from the theatre.

Paul bought his own ticket.

Click here to watch this review on our YouTube channel Theatre Reviews With Paul Seven

Click here to read a roundup of critics’ reviews of Oedipus

September 24, 2019March 31, 2020

Juliet Stevenson in The Doctor at the Almeida Theatre

Juliet Stevenson outstanding in Robert Icke’s exposure of populism

★★★

Production photo of Juliet Stevenson in The Doctor at the Almeida Theatre London — Juliet Stevenson in The Doctor. Photo: Manuel Harlan

Dr Wolfe, played by Juliet Stevenson, prides herself on being logical and making medical decisions based on facts in a world of irrationality.

Hildegard Bechtler’s stark set is quite a contrast to the detailed oppressiveness of her design for Rosmersholm. Here you have bare pale walls with only a table and benches in the middle, very clinical and hospital-like but also reflecting the cool rationality of the main protagonist.

On this occasion she’s treating a 14 year old girl who has botched a self administered abortion and contracted sepsis. She’s going to die and Dr Wolfe wants her to die peacefully. A Catholic priest turns up expecting to give her the last rites but the doctor doesn’t want her patient disturbed.

Thenceforth this sparkler of an incident turns into a stick of dynamite as the doctor is attacked on all sides: by her colleagues who want her power reduced, by campaigners who seize an opportunity for publicity, by internet trolls who want to vent their anger.

Production photo showing the cast of The Doctor at the Almeida Theatre in London — The Doctor at the Almeida Theatre. Photo: Manuel Harlan

An online petition condemning her gains tens of thousands of signatures from people who know nothing of the case. An anti-abortionist attacks her even though she didn’t carry out an abortion. People abuse her and accuse her of murder. Her Jewish parentage is invoked as a reason for her anti-Catholic behaviour.

Much of the play is about a rational person trying to maintain her position while being besieged by irrational, prejudiced people with their own agendas.

Robert Icke’s clever use of gender and colour blind casting

Writer and director Robert Icke cleverly uses gender and colour blind casting to wrong foot the audience. We don’t see why the doctor should be accused of prejudice until we realise that someone we thought was white was black or someone we saw as a woman is a man, thus underlining that it is the accusers who are prejudiced.

The doctor is drawn into defending herself and, under pressure, she reveals some prejudice in her own behaviour which leads to irrationality, but in unexpected ways.

Take language. Her pride in her rationality is illustrated by her obsession with the correct use of English. She picks someone up for saying ‘literally’ in a context where it means precisely the opposite. Later she is forced to acknowledge that language is fluid and subjective, when her enemies pick on a seemingly innocuous phrase as being racist because she used it against a black person.

She also freely admits that her practice of medicine is only the sum of today’s knowledge and could be seen as ignorant and like witchcraft in the future.

The original play on which The Doctor is based is Professor Bernhardi by Arthur Schnitzler. Written a hundred years ago it was a warning against the rise of populism and its use of people’s prejudices as a weapon. These days the tools may be different- social media and TV- but Robert Icke’s new version suggests the tactics of populists remain the same.

Juliet Stevenson gives a five star performance

The Doctor shows how frighteningly easy it is for the rational can be submerged by the irrational. Our protagonist gradually breaks down as she is engulfed by a nightmare. Juliet Stevenson gives a five star performance as she descends from the ramrod stiff leader at the opening through anger to desolation and tears.

The problem for me was that the plot seemed contrived. I didn’t believe that events would turn out this way. Would a senior doctor in dementia take on someone with sepsis from A&E? Would a TV debate really include an anti-abortionist when abortion was not the issue? Add to which, the other characters seemed like ciphers there simply to make a point.

Production photo of Ria Zmitrowicz and Juliet Stevenson in The Doctor at the Almeida Theatre in London — Ria Zmitrowicz and Juliet Stevenson in The Doctor. Photo: Manuel Harlanliet

The exception was the troubled young person staying with Dr Wolff and who has her private life exposed. only the other week The Sun published a repugnant story which used the name of famous cricketer Ben Stokes as an excuse to write about his parents and a family tragedy that happened before he was even born. Ria Zmitrowicz was convincingly nervous and vulnerable as she placed her trust in her substitute mother.

A lack of respect for his audience?

I was disappointed in one element of Robert Icke’s direction. There is a point where Juliet Stevenson sits on the front of the stage and has an important confrontation with another character. This was not visible from the Circle where I was sitting. I have worked in a 2000 seat theatre where the directors would go to the back and sides of each of the three levels to ensure that the actors could be seen. It would be surprising if, in a theatre as small as the Almeida with 360 seats and two levels, Mr Icke was unaware that hundreds of ticket buyers would be unable to see this crucial moment.

Remembering the theme of this play, I will admit that I don’t know all the circumstances and I’m not a director. Nevertheless I find it difficult to believe he couldn’t have moved this scene upstage a little. I’m not going to start a Facebook petition or a Twitter campaign but he does appear to be showing a lack of respect for his audience.

Robert Icke is a hugely talented director and while his final production as associate director of the Alemeida Theatre may not be his best, The Doctor is an imaginative, thought provoking work that generates a powerful performance by one of our finest actors.

The Doctor is performing at the Almeida Theatre until 28 September 2019 before transferring to the Duke Of York’s Theatre for a limited run from 20 April 2020.

Click here to watch the YouTube review of The Doctor starring Juliet Stevenson

September 3, 2019March 31, 2020

Hansard starring Lindsay Duncan & Alex Jennings – review

Art on a human scale

★★★★★

Hansard in the Lyttelton Theatre of the National Theatre is what I love about theatre. Forget video screens, background music, special effects. This is simply two great actors live on stage telling a story to a live audience. For ninety unbroken minutes this couple bickers and takes swipes at each other until eventually they reveal what’s behind their fractured relationship. It’s art on a human scale.

Production shot from Hansard at the National Theatre with Lindsay Duncan and Alex Jennings — Alex Jennings & Lindsay Duncan in Hansard. Photo: Catherine Ashmore

And what’s amazing is that this is Simon Woods’ first play which makes its perfect structure and precise and funny dialogue all the more remarkable. And there’s confidence in how he handles his audience- he’s even bold enough to make a joke about plays with no interval.

In case you don’t know, Hansard is the written record of all that is said in Parliament. But it doesn’t tell the full story. This play is about what’s not said. The story behind the legislation. The point where the personal and the political meet.

It’s 1988. Robin, a public schoolboy MP, arrives home for the weekend. His wife Diana seems unprepared for his arrival. She isn’t happy that his government has just passed section 28 which outlaws sympathetic teaching about homosexuality. He’s upset at how wild animals are wrecking his lawn. She lays into him, pretending she thinks he’s talking about what his government is doing to the country. There are many more crowd pleasing snipes at the public schoolboys who run the Conservative government and the country. For example, there’s a joke about how people who keep voting for them are like abused partners. It all sounds so contemporary despite being set 30 years ago.

It’s clearly familiar ground this couple are going over, a bit like putting on old slippers, neither surprises the other, being amused even by each other’s insults.

Gradually the humour subsides without totally disappearing and the previously unspoken reason for the schism between them is revealed, followed by secrets that are deeply upsetting but show how much they have misunderstood one another in their anger.

I suspect Diana and Robin owe a debt to Edward Albee’s warring couple in Who’s Afraid Of Virginia Woolf? but this war of words is less vicious or at least more civilised.

Lindsay Duncan and Alex Jennings convince

Lindsay Duncan and Alex Jennings, directed by Simon Godwin, are top class. He is totally believable as the upper class husband who keeps his emotions battened down and reacts to everything in the modest self-deprecating way of those born to rule. (I was very impressed by his ability to first cook toast on an Aga and then eat it while still projecting his lines to the back of the circle.)

She too is upper class but while she enunciates vowels that could cut glass, her voice is strained by emotion suggesting she is close to the edge. Even so, she is in control enough to toy with her husband and give him sideways looks that could cut steak.

These are convincing characters in a real situation. What implications there are about the way we conduct our politics- her ineffective left wing words, his assumption of his right to govern, the need for understanding and common ground- are very subtly woven in.

Hildegard Bechtler’s set, a naturalistic kitchen and dining area, uses the often intimidating width of the Lyttelton stage to great effect by bringing down the proscenium arch until it looks even wider, like a letterbox. Which means the warring couple seem at times miles apart.

You might wonder why 1988, why not now? Certainly much of what is said in the play could refer to today. Common values, tolerance and liberal democracy are once again taking a bashing at the hands of public schoolboys. I guess one answer is that setting it in the past will stop it being dated. But it’s also an important reminder that government backed homophobia was present in Britain only 30 years ago and therefore how recent and possibly fragile gains in LGBT rights are.

Hansard is an excellent and an important play.

Hansard was at the National Theatre until 25 November 2019. An NTLive recording and can be seen at cinemas in January 2020.

Click here to watch the review on YouTube