First adaptation of Stanley Kubrick's work

Armando Iannucci is writing a stage version of the classic 1964 film satire Dr Strangelove.

The project will be the first adaptation of any of Stanley Kubrick’s works to be given official approval by the director’s family.

It will be staged in London's West End next autumn, co-written and directed by Sean Foley, artistic director of the Birmingham Repertory Theatre – who co-wrote the currently running Spitting Image musical Idiots Assemble.

The original film starred Peter Sellers in three main parts  – the titular German scientist, a British officer and the American president – but Foley said the triple role had not yet been cast for the stage, where the costume changes would make the triple role much more of a challenge.

Kubrick's widow Christiane told BBC News: ‘We have always been reluctant to let anyone adapt any of Stanley's work, and we never have. It was so important to him that it wasn't changed from how he finished it.

‘But we could not resist authorising this project: the time is right; the people doing it are fantastic; and Strangelove should be brought to a new and younger audience. I am sure Stanley would have approved it too.’

Dr Strangelove Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying And Love the Bomb was made and set at the height of the paranoia-fuelled Cold War, and Iannucci said his version would remain a period piece.

Appearing on Radio 4’s Today show this morning, he joked: ’In these sad times what better to cheer the nation up than stage show about the end of the world.

‘It’s looming even more on our imagination now, isn't it with with the climate emergency… and with the war in Ukraine, and the whole nuclear question coming up again, it just hasn't gone away. ‘

He said the story was ‘funny and terrifying - that’s the that's the combination I like’ – adding that it would be an eye-opener for those who did not remember Cold War tensions

‘I think a lot of the post 1960s generation would have forgotten about mutually assured destruction,’ he said. ‘The whole thing was predicated on this absurd logic, that they won't go for us because they know we'll go for them, and then we'll all die. So surely they wouldn't go for us.

‘That's the kind of calculus that's put into politics. In the film, there is a rogue general. What happens if the world there is a rogue… let’s for the sake of argument, call it Putin?

‘So these questions are still there. And these weapons are still there, and and the whole talk now about AI and handing everything over to the robots? I don't think that will end well, either. So it's very much in our conversation.

‘What's appealing about the film, and what we're looking at the stage show, is that is the is the very human frailty and vulnerability, the tiny little administrative details.

‘Quite a lot of the film is about trying to find out the codes to stop them [the nuclear launches]. And we've just spent the last two days with an ex-Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, forgetting his PIN number for his phone in which all his crucial Covid WhatsApp messages are..’

Foley added: I ‘don't need to point out the relevance or the resonances, I think they're just there. ‘

On adapting such a classic piece of theatre, he said: ‘’You’ve got to find what that essence is but you can't be enslaved by the original. 

‘You have to find a new way of doing it's in a different medium. You've got to make it a proper piece of theatre. But you have to do this weird balance of giving people what they want, if they know the original, but also for new people coming to it be a wonderful new piece of work. That's the challenge’

The show will be produced by Patrick Miles and David Luff, who previously brought the satirical film Network to the West End and Broadway.

The BBC is also reporting that Iannucci is working on another theatre project about Boris Johnson and Partygate, although details have not yet been announced. He said he was drawn to exploring the topic on stage because ‘in the last three years, we've been so enclosed in our homes because of the lockdown, and have got addicted to our screens, so actually going out and seeing something live and in the flesh is all the more exciting. 

‘That's what excites me about actually doing it as a live stage show.’

Published: 15 Jul 2023