Review: Dr Strangelove at the Noel Coward theatre
My first draft started “I can see what they were trying to do”, but after weeks of reflection, I’ve concluded I’ve no idea what they thought they were trying to do. Whatever it was, they didn’t do it. They, in case you missed it, are Steve Coogan and Armando Iannucci.
“Don’t mess with perfection” is good advice. Dr Strangelove is regarded as one of the best satires of all time, consistently placed high in lists of the greatest films ever made. Stanley Kubrick was a genius who made movies where every frame was agonised over. There was a reason he took his time. You can see it. You can feel it.
Deliberately shot in black and white to have a documentary-like realism and a deeper contrasting asthetic, Dr Strangelove, or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb, showed the power of comedy to better make the absurdity of Mutually Assured Destruction than facts. The world's future really was (and is) in the hands of lunatics. We blindly trust our leaders not to be this stupid. Whilst very much of its Cold War time it is still relevant today.
Peter Sellers’ triple role (planned to be a quadruple but for either a broken ankle or the inability to pull off a Texan accent, depending on your website of choice) is considered one of the best comic performances in cinema. He brought depth, humour and character to Group Captain Lionel Mandrake, President Merkin Muffley and Dr Strangelove.
To think what was needed was to improve upon this film surely sits between foolhardy and brazen. It’s no surprise, then, they widely missed the mark.
Mr Coogan is a talented mimic—indeed, one of the best. This puts him in a bind, however: copy the flawless characters Peter Sellers presented, as I'm sure he could, or have a stab at his own. Perhaps the only credible choice was the latter although, alas, all his voices fell flat, didn't fit the character and often couldn't reach the back of the room, despite help from the speakers.
The translation to the stage added nothing and lost a lot. It's true the film is a series of sets, it has the feel of a play given the tight script and almost realtime timeframe. But the film's sets were famously grand. The War Room was said to have left such an impression on Ronald Reagan that he asked to be shown to it. The claustrophobia of being on a B-52 was absent; a US airbase become one office.
But the most distracting part of the night was entirely avoidable had ego not got in the way. The endless costume change contrivances became hackneyed to the point it became a self-referential in-joke breaking the fourth wall. That plus the need to reorder core parts of the story so one man could play all the parts on stage left the audience feeling they were watching an expensive experiment based on a dare between two over-connected media luvvies whilst having a drink too many.
The question of why still demands an answer. If you think you can out-Sellers Sellers, and improve on Kubrick, you must have a seriously high opinion of yourself.
I'd say too high.
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