Audiences warned new Dr Strangelove show includes cigarette smoking

Never mind nuclear Armageddon – West End audiences are being warned a new production of Dr Strangelove includes cigarette smoking and bad language.

Critics attacked the warnings, saying smoking and swearing alerts were ridiculous given the play is about nuclear doomsday. 

The new production, which stars Steve Coogan, is the first official adaptation of Stanley Kubrick’s acclaimed anti-war film, Dr Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb. 

In the 1964 satire, a deranged US Air Force general orders a nuclear assault on the Soviet Union, and the film ends with a bomb heading towards Russia.

Audience members for the new production – which opens next month at the Noel Coward Theatre in London – are warned: ‘The performance contains some flashing lights and gunshots, use of replica guns, haze, bad language and smoking onstage.’ In contrast, the apocalyptic premise of the play does not appear worthy of a trigger warning.

Critics last night accused producers of ‘infantilising’ audiences.

Steve Bennett, editor of the Chortle website, said: ‘Given the play’s about the build-up to nuclear Armageddon, I’d absolutely hope there would be some bad language.’

John Sutherland, author of Triggered Literature, added: ‘Given the play will climax with fictional doomsday, it might be worth recommending a gasper or two to the audience.’ 

And Frank Furedi, emeritus professor of sociology at the University of Kent, said: ‘This warning is performance within a performance. It is an infantilised performance of virtue that aims to

protect sensitive souls from being ambushed by the sight of smoking and bad language.’

A spokesman for Delfont Mackintosh, which owns the Noel Coward Theatre, said the warning was a matter for producers and declined to comment further. The producers were unavailable for comment.