Dr Strangelove: Steve Coogan and director Seán Foley on staging the Cold War classic 

The first reviews, in the wake of social anxieties by way of the Cold War, were bleak. Many linked the plot with Soviet propaganda and critic, Philip K Scheuer, insisted the film was “an evil thing about an evil thing.” Today we know that American officers under Kennedy did indeed have the ability to start a nuclear war, something Kubrick and comic Peter Sellers couldn’t have dreamed of amidst a darkly satirical piece. And yet, criticism persisted. Much of it is based on the plot’s implausibility; surely nuclear war couldn’t just happen, could it?

“It got to a stage in production where we kind of resorted to gallows humour,” laughs Seán Foley, the director of a new stage version starring Steve Coogan. “We said: the worse the world gets, the better it is for the play. The more relevant it seems. You know, we’ve got a Russian president who is, I think, unhelpful for the world, and the same is happening in America.

“And then a more specific example is Robert F Kennedy, a fervent anti-vaxxer, who has now been appointed to the Minister of Health job. You know, he actually says a line that Jack D Ripper says in the play! We’ve gone through the Alice in Wonderland mirror, into a world where you can say what you like without any basis. And that is undeniably worrying.” Foley, the Lancashire-born director whose father came from Tramore, Co Waterford, says Kubrick’s original draft was a serious drama. “But as he went on, he realised how absurd it all read. He actually shot an end to the film which was a custard pie fight, basically insinuating that not being able to work out differences would end in a pie fight, or in this case, a dispatch of nuclear weapons,” says the double Olivier Award-winner.

Nuclear armageddon has never, historically, had a funny side, but with Dr Strangelove, comedy is obligatory in order to digest the message. “Comedy is a way of sugaring the pill of difficult subject matter,” Coogan says.

“That's what's good about comedy,” Foley interjects. “You're connecting with people's understanding of the world and sort of giving them a lightning rod to laugh at these things, which I think is important. That’s exactly the right way to write a comedy about the end of the world.” Today, similar social anxieties centre around misinformation (false or inaccurate information) and disinformation (false or inaccurate information that is intentionally spread). Coogan believes Strangelove is so relevant today because the world we are in is a very unstable place.

“Populism is taking a grip all over the world, just as it did in Weimar. History does repeat itself,” says the star who is back working with his Alan Partridge collaborator Armando Iannucci for the Dr Strangelove adaptation. “You can’t think we’ve all learned a lesson because the people who learnt the lesson grow old and die, and unless they keep talking about it, the new generation comes along, whose memory of it is scant, and are destined to repeat those mistakes. At any point in history, bad things are done by sort of ostensibly good people, and so talking about it in a comedy, even a black comedy doesn’t diminish that subject matter.”

Remarkably, Foley himself is acutely suited to such a piece; his own tangle with misinformation made national news. Following the airing of Baby Reindeer on Netflix, Foley was wrongly accused of being the inspiration for one of the distasteful characters in the series. “People I love, have worked with, and admire (including Sean Foley) are unfairly getting caught up in speculation,” Baby Reindeer creator Richard Gadd posted on Instagram soon after the online rumours took hold.

That unpleasant situation isn’t something Foley wants to discuss today, but such internet untruths are all part of the same environment that Dr Strangelove inhabits. As per the military maxim attributed to Aeschylus, the father of Greek tragedy, “In war, truth is the first casualty”, something Dr Strangelove plays with in ways both serious and comedic.

“If someone’s going to provide you with answers, or a theory that seems to explain things, then you’re kind of grateful, right?” Foley says. “I think that’s probably as far as I understand conspiracy theorists or beliefs in general. People believe stuff. Look at religion, they believe in their own gods and want to kill others who don’t. That’s still happening, and something I believe to be the biggest conspiracy of them all.” Coogan was an ideal choice choice for the part(s). His performance is a masterclass in comic timing, most especially when moving as Dr Strangelove and speaking as President Merkin Muffley. (“Gentleman you can't fight in here, this is the war room!”) “I didn’t think I’d be able to learn all those lines, never mind perform them,” Coogan smiles.

Foley says the play offers a showcasing of the flaws of the male species. “That’s one of the strong themes. We’ve added more jokes to in the play. In that way, and others, Steve [Coogan] was an obvious choice. There are incredibly few people who could probably even attempt this role, and we were just lucky that he said yes,” says the 60-year-old.

“It feels like a privilege and sort of an honour to do it,” Coogan, 59, says. “And I know it’s quite a task, but I’ve been around the block a few times you know, and I think I’ve earned my stripes. I’ve got as good a shot at trying to do what he [Sellers] did, but in my way.” In the final scenes, a montage of exploding mushroom clouds is choreographed to the sounds of the wartime classic ‘We’ll Meet Again’.

The world is burning, we come to know, as Vera Lynn (played in London by Penny Ashmore) makes an appearance as an angel emerging from an underground mineshaft. “I always say that everything means what the individual wants it to mean,” Foley smiles. “And the meaning for me is that they’re all dead and so Vera Lynn is the sweetest angel of death you’ll ever see.” Sixty years on from its first production, one might glean that Kubrick’s black comedy provided a far more accurate description of the dangers inherent in nuclear systems than Americans did from the Pentagon or the mainstream media. Ultimately, this –– though bleak and unnerving –– acted as the motivity for Foley’s stage adaptation.

“I’m not sure people go to plays and come out saying ‘Oh, that’s really changed how I see the world’,” he says. “It sometimes happens, but that’s not what we’re going for here. For our show, I think it simply confirms that we’re all idiots. And that the people in charge are just as stupid as the rest of us. There’s a kind of comfort in that, I think.”

 “What’s unifying about a production like this is that you have a group of people in the same space who might have different views on things, and yet can still all laugh together,” Coogan concludes. “That humanises. It makes you think: well, I might vehemently disagree with someone, but if I’m laughing with that same person at the same thing, there’s got that sort of common shared humanity – and that can only be a good thing.” 

Dr Strangelove is at the Bord Gáis Energy Theatre from February 5 to 22, 2025. See bordgaisenergytheatre.ie