Dr. Strangelove: is stage adaptation of iconic film a 'foolish' move?

Stanley Kubrick's 1964 film about Cold War brinkmanship risked looking like a vehicle for Peter Sellers to "showboat" in three roles. Instead, owing to the talents of its director and star, "Dr. Strangelove" "rocketed into" the cinematic canon.

"It takes a confident – foolish? – team to tamper with a work quite so revered, and so suited to the screen," said Arifa Akbar in The Guardian. Nevertheless, Armando Iannucci and director Sean Foley have had a go at adapting it for the stage, with mixed results.

'Low stakes'

Steve Coogan takes on the three Sellers roles, plus a fourth (Major Kong). His Dr. Strangelove, the former Nazi weapons expert, is actually funnier than Sellers's version; and though he is not quite as effective in the other three roles, his fans certainly get "bang for their buck". The adaptation, however, follows the film so faithfully that it "feels dated, the stakes low"; and though the script sometimes "glints with humorous intelligence", the satire is in places "pedestrian and soft". The production's "dubious" achievement is to have turned an "edgy, absurdist story into broad entertainment with accessible laughs".

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Played too much for laughs

"Like a stealth bomber", Coogan leaves all the other actors trailing in his wake, but dazzling as his turns are, they seem more like a series of impersonations than "particularised performances", said Claire Allfree in The Daily Telegraph; and while the knockabout humour often works, the show is played too much for laughs, and lacks the film's "deadly" irony. This is a production that was evidently built around its star – not one that was created "out of necessity" for a generation "caught, once again, in the panicky crosshairs of a possible nuclear war".

Even the design is impressive rather than inspired, said Dominic Maxwell in The Sunday Times. It "artfully apes Ken Adam's grand originals", but that serves as just another reminder that "this show isn't quite its own thing". Did its makers ever have a plan? Or was this always just about giving Coogan a chance to test himself as a 21st century Peter Sellers?

Noël Coward Theatre, London WC2. Until 25 January