Dr Strangelove stage adaptation to open in the West End, penned by Armando Iannucci and Sean Foley

Stanley Kubrick’s legendary Cold War satire Dr Strangelove is making its way to the stage.

BAFTA and Emmy Award winner Armando Iannucci and award-winning director Sean Foley will adapt the film, marking the first time a Kubrick work has made the leap to theatre.

Iannucci said: “It’s both thrilling and hugely terrifying to be asked to adapt Kubrick’s great apocalyptic movie for the stage: which is useful, since it’s a thrilling comedy about huge terror. The events it portrays are no less mad today than when Stanley Kubrick made the film 60 years ago.

“No-one marshals madness on stage better than Sean Foley so it’s been an extremely enjoyable process plotting our mutually assured destruction together.  My hope is audiences will respond to Dr Strangelove on stage with bountiful laughter and shrieks.”

Dr Strangelove was released in 1964 and places itself against the backdrop of nuclear paranoia and tensions between the USSR and USA. It includes the famous line “Gentlemen, You Can’t Fight In Here! This is The War Room!”

Foley added: “It is both a privilege and a thrill to be asked to adapt and direct one of the most iconic films of all time, and working with Armando Iannucci on the adaptation has been a joy. Stanley Kubrick’s ’nightmare comedy’ is a perennially relevant satire on world politics and how powerful men can be stupid enough to let us all die if it means they get to brag about it. With a string of hilarious scenes and characters, and a plot that takes us to the edge of doom, I hope Dr Strangelove on stage will once again prove to be the comedy that makes us think deeply whilst we laugh our heads off.”

Christiane Kubrick, Stanley’s widow, commented: “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.”

Casting, venue, run dates and details are all to be revealed. Jan Harlan, Kubrick’s long-time producer, continued: “Dr Strangelove was initially conceived as a serious film based on the novel “Red Alert” by Peter George. During the adaptation Stanley ran into a wall: It was impossible to make a successful film about the end of mankind since nobody, himself included, would want to see it. The answer was satire.   Laughing is one of our go-to responses when faced with an inescapable reality. As the film charts our short path to total self-destruction, we must make fun of it and ‘all will be well’.” 

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