Captured before a live audience at the Noël Coward Theatre in London, Armando Iannucci (The Death of Stalin) and director Sean Foley’s adaptation of Stanley Kubrick’s 1964 chilling Cold War satire manages to neither add nor substantially detract from the original.

Steve Coogan takes on the three roles so superbly played by Peter Sellars – the titular closet Nazi Strangelove, US President Merkin Muffley and the British Air Force Group Captain Lionel Mandrake. These he performs very well. He also grabs some extra spotlight, taking on the gung-ho B-52 pilot TJ “King” Kong, a character so indelibly played by Slim Pickens in the film. Let’s just say it is a lost opportunity for someone else to shine harder.

Dr Strangelove. Photo © Manuel Harlan

The staging – which makes use of some impressive big screen technology – follows the story faithfully, beginning with Mandrake’s attempts to short-circuit rogue American general Jack D Ripper’s decision to launch a nuclear strike on Russia and thus preserve the purity of his “precious bodily fluids”.

From there, the action is split between the Pentagon War Room presided over by Muffley and the cockpit of Kong’s bomber,...