How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Play

Posted on 23rd March 2025

There was a time when Kubrick’s comic masterpiece felt like a relic of the Cold War. How easy it was, only a few years ago, to chuckle knowingly at a film that satirised the folly of mutually assured destruction, a fear that seemed to dissipate after the disassembling of the Soviet Union. Armando Iannucci’s reimagining of Dr Strangelove now looks oddly prescient in these troubled times.

Ironically, given our current perilous situation, the play’s president is the grown up in the room, but you can’t avoid the implication that it only takes one crazy person to start a war. Kubrick’s crazy person is Jack Ripper, played by John Hopkins, who bounces off Steve Coogan’s Captain Lionel Mandrake wonderfully, in some of the funniest scenes of the night. Along with Giles Terera as the gung-ho General Turgidson and Ben Turner as Colonel Bat Guano, Hopkin’s manic performance highlights just how good the supporting cast is. The play is, however, fundamentally a vehicle for Coogan, and there’s a palpable sense of expectation as we wait to see what he’ll make of the eponymous Doctor. Views will differ on how well he measures up to the Sellers original, but there’s no doubting the extra thrill of seeing the actor slip from one character to the next, and how deftly Sean Foley’s direction makes it possible. Fans of the film will be further impressed that Coogan goes one better than Sellers, also taking on the Slim Pickings role of Major Kong.

His appearance coincides with Hildegard Bechtler’s very effective recreation of the cockpit of a B-52s, just one of the impressive sets created for a play that swings from panicked war room to military base to the air space over Moscow, as the action sticks closely to its source material. It does let loose theatrically towards the end, though, with a very special appearance from someone that the film only hints at. You’ll have to go see the National Theatre Live Broadcast to find out who.