Page 1066 - Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Coverage Book 2023-24

Sean Foley, Steve Coogan and Armando Iannucci have adapted Dr Strangelove for the
stage. Photograph: Manuel Harlan

Bruce Robinson has written the first stage adaptation of Withnail and I (Birmingham
Rep, 3 to 25 May), his 1987 film, which starred Richard E Grant, Paul McGann and a
huge joint known as the Camberwell Carrot. Based on Robinson’s experiences as an
out-of-work actor in Camden Town, the plot, which casts an anti-idyllic eye on the
English countryside, has been described by director Sean Foley as a picture of “a
friendship falling apart”. Foley also directs a stage version of Stanley Kubrick’s Dr
Strangelove (Noël Coward, London, from 8 October), co-written with The Thick of It’s
Armando Iannucci, in which Steve Coogan takes on “hugely contrasting roles”. In the
movie, released in 1964, two years after the Cuban missile crisis, Peter Sellers played an
ex-Nazi scientist, a British officer and the US president. Granted access to the director’s
archive, Iannucci has found papers containing “little shards of ideas” unused in the
film, some of which he has developed for the stage. “It seems the right time,” he says,
“to remind people of the mad logic behind these dangerous games that superpowers
play.” SCl

Art

Give an overlooked trailblazer her due at a Serpentine solo show