People Are Dr Strangelove

Steve Coogan brings the Kubrick classic to The Whale

It may be 61 years old, but Stanley Kubrick’s Oscar-nominated Dr Strangelove, Or How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Bomb still has the power to hit a few nerves.

And tickle a lot of funny bones too, of course.

Set in a US war room after a rogue US general targets the Soviet Union and thus triggers a mounting nuclear crisis, Dr Strangelove was notable not only for its political satire and black comedy of the highest order but also by the fact that Peter Sellers played three roles – Gropu Captain Lionel Mandrake, a British RAF exchange officer, Merkin Muffley, the President of the United States and the titular role of the wheelchair-bound nuclear war expert and former Nazi with alien hand syndrome (aka The Elon Musk Salute).

Back in 1963, Columbia Pictures actually wanted Sellers to play four major roles in the film, but the former Goon felt adding Air Force Major T.J. ‘King’ Kong to his workload would be too heavy.

When Armando Iannucci (The Thick Of It, The Day Today) decided to adapt Stranglelove, he decided to call on his old mate, Steve Coogan – who promptly insisted on adding the Sellers role that got away.

Taking on four roles means that the Alan Partridge creator is on stage almost every second of the production.

“History does repeat itself,” Coogan told The Sunday Business Post. “You can’t think we’ve all learned a lesson because previous people did. Unless we keep talking about it, a new generation of people will come along whose memory of it is scant, and are destined to repeat those mistakes.

“No one is immune from history, and I think we’ve done as good a show as we could have done regarding that.”

Adds Ianucci, “If you tackle subjects through comedy, you can actually analyse them properly. It’s not demeaning the subject. It’s just giving you a kind of slightly more original way of looking at it.

“Some people prefer drama to be drama, but I kind of feel comedy is a heightened form of drama. It can be as equally as potent, powerful and impactful, and the immediacy of the stage lends to that wonderfully.”

You can grab your ticket for the NT Live Screening of Dr Strangelove on Thursday, April 17th 2025 here: https://whaletheatre.ticketsolve.com/ticketbooth/shows/873651940/events/128579680