The First-Ever Adaptation Of Stanley Kubrick's Work Will Launch 'Dr. Strangelove' On Stage In London's West End
Silver Screen Collection. Getty Images.[Variety]
"Stanley Kubrick’s 1964 political satire film “Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb,” is being adapted as a stage production for London’s West End by “Veep” creator Armando Iannucci.
"[…] Iannucci has been allowed access to the Kubrick archive where he has found some discarded scenes and drafts that will make their way into the play, which will also be set in the 1960s.
"Kubrick’s widow, Christiane, said: '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.'"
I know, I know. Anyone born after 1997 probably has a violent revulsion to black-and-white movies, hence muted excitement about this news, but Stanley Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove is the darkest, possibly ballsiest comedy ever alongside Charlie Chaplin's The Great Dictator. There's not a better Kubrick project to be adapted to the stage, given that the film's action takes place largely in a Pentagon war room, inside of a military base and aboard a B-52 bomber aircraft.
Kubrick is the best pound-for-pound director of all-time in my opinion. This man's groundbreaking 2001: A Space Odyssey served as the chief inspiration for entertainment business nobodies in the headlines at all right now such as Tom Cruise and Christopher Nolan. How fitting that on the week of Nolan's Oppenheimer release and just behind Cruise's latest Mission: Impossible installment with global stakes that we're catching wind of Dr. Strangelove's masterful Cold War satire getting the West End treatment.
2001's Dawn of Man sequence was what ignited my interest in Barbie in the first place from the initial teaser. It was also parodied in the latest Best Picture winner, Everything Everywhere All At Once.
It saddens me that TikTok stars probably don't have a fucking clue who Stanley Kubrick even is. He did so much to push the art form of cinema forward. Kubrick was the textbook definition of "auteur" and yet his films still connected with massive audiences. Nothing short of a mad scientist genius with a camera in his hands.
What intrigues me most about Dr. Strangelove going to the theatre is how the key roles will be cast. Peter Sellers famously played three different roles in the film and was brilliant and so different in every single one. In addition to playing the ex-Nazi titular character, Sellers was Royal Air Force officer Lionel Mandrake and US President Merkin Muffley. Talk about range.
By the way, this is an all-time great trailer:
I assume some lucky soul will get to inhabit all three characters whenever this production is mounted. Talk about acting heaven. The other compelling element to this is the fact that Armando Iannucci has access to the Kubrick archives, which might as well be Fort Knox. There are apparently cut Strangelove scenes that he might add back into the stage play. One aspect to Sellers' President Muffley that was cut from the movie was that he had a cold. Apparently Sellers was doing such hilarious behavior while playing sick that Kubrick made him stop because the actors couldn't get through takes without breaking.
Can't wait to see the cast list for this. We can only hope it makes it across the pond to Broadway someday. I suspect it will given that it's, you know, an unprecedented Stanley Kubrick adaptation. It'll either be a world-class theatre actor headlining the show, or a big-name box office star. The main antagonist, rogue general Jack D. Ripper, along with the Slim Pickens-originated Major Kong, are other dream characters for any actor to play.
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Christiane Kubrick is so right to green light this play. Dr. Strangelove deserves to be brought to a new generation. It's surreal that this is happening. Just hope I get to see it along with many others who'd appreciate such a towering masterwork brought to life in the unmatched setting of live theatre. Some pretty cool shit happening in the West End of late!
Twitter @MattFitz_gerald/TikTok