Operation Mincemeat – Fortune Theatre

Picture: Matt Crockett

Operation Mincemeat continues at the Fortune Theatre, London until 19 August 2023.

Star rating: five stars ★ ★ ★ ★ ★

The path from Fringe theatre to West End is becoming a little more well trodden of late. My Son’s A Queer (But What Can You Do?) originated at Battersea’s Turbine Theatre before runs at the Garrick and the Ambassadors, while Ryan Calais Cameron’s breathtaking For Black Boys Who Have Considered Suicide When the Hue Gets Too Heavy, which recently completed its run at the Lyric Theatre, started at the New Diorama in Euston.

Operation Mincemeat’s route to the West End has been a little more circuitous. Theatre company SpitLip’s Second World War musical, like For Black Boys…, also originated at the New Diorama: its 2019 run there was followed by further outings at Southwark Playhouse and Riverside Studios. Now it arrives at the Fortune Theatre – but although this is arguably the latest iteration of the production, it is also the first where every piece falls into place.

The SpitLip team of David Cumming, Felix Hagan, Natasha Hodgson and Zoë Roberts, who collaborated on book, music and lyrics, have created a theatrical fantasy based around a British Second World War plan which was, itself, a bonkers bit of theatricality. To regain southern Europe, Allied forces needed to retake Sicily – but to do so, needed Nazi Germany to believe instead that the invasion would happen in Sardinia.

In order to achieve this, British intelligence came up with Operation Mincemeat. A corpse, dressed in uniform, was allowed to wash ashore in Spain with papers supporting his fake identity of a senior officer, ‘Major William Martin’. Along with the body was a briefcase full of plans for a supposed Sardinian invasion. If the briefcase fell into German hands, the hope was that these fake plans would be believed and Nazi forces relocated, allowing the Allies to proceed with their true plan more effectively.
This act of military deception has been documented elsewhere, most recently 2022’s dour film version starring Colin Firth. No project has embraced the outlandish bravado of the entire venture with quite such anarchic abandon as SpitLip’s version.

Operation Mincemeat is as much a spoof of war movies as it is a musical retelling of a true story: while not a sibling of, say, Patrick Barlow’s adaptation of The 39 Steps it does feel as if the two went to the same school. The early stages, as a team of Naval Intelligence officers attempts to come up with ways to mislead the Germans, leans heavily on the idea of public schoolboys growing up into roles in which they believe they are entitled to lead, rather than earning their positions of power.
After riffing on James Bond writer Ian Fleming’s real role within Operation Mincemeat (Roberts here playing Fleming as a man obsessed with writing spy novels to the despair of his colleagues) the play’s two real protagonists emerge. Cumming’s Charles Cholmondley, who comes up with the plan but lacks the confidence to present it, teams up with fellow officer Ewen Montagu (Hodgson) who has the confidence but precious little else.

The gender imbalance is lightly leant on here, with men assumed to be the clever ones and women reduced to the secretarial pool or fetching the tea. That’s reinforced by musical numbers including ‘Born to Lead’ and ‘All the Ladies’, the latter leaning on an homage to Beyoncé’s ‘Single Ladies’ (especially moves which Frank Gatson himself lifted from Gwen Verdon).
Claire Marie Hall’s Jean, whose refusal to know her place sees her attached to the Operation Mincemeat planning team, bucks that trend. But less literally, the absurdity of 1940s (and even 2020s) fixation with gender roles is subverted by Hodgson. Her portrayal of Montagu has softened since she originated the role at the New Diorama: then it was very much a bombastic cosplay, more of an act of drag. In this new version, Hodgson is more concerned with being Montagu than playing his gender, and the subversion is all the stronger for it.

And while Hodgson’s fellow SpitLip co-founder Roberts also plays many male roles, it is Jak Malone’s understated office matriarch, Hester, who is Hodgson’s equal in the gender-blind stakes. Initially little more than a matronly withering look behind a pair of spectacle on a chain – if Operation Mincemeat were a Carry On film, Hester would be Hattie Jacques – Malone brings a depth of soul to his performance that reaches its zenith in the sublime torch song ‘Dear Bill’. As Hester drafts a love letter to the fake airman at the heart of the deceptive operation, she utilises her own memories from the previous war, resulting in one of the most beautiful, heartfelt ballads to the fallen.

Malone’s performance as Hester is all the more remarkable given that he, with a couple of very quick changes, also plays two very different key roles. His Bernard Spilsbury – a sequinned coroner who sources the dead body with all the glass of a Sweeney Todd choreographed by Fosse – is deliciously camp, while his Act II role as a US airman is similarly as sharp as it is broad.

The same can be said for the music. Operation Mincemeat has several passages that need to be laden with exposition. These are delivered in the sort of spoken rap that people will most recently associate with Hamilton, but have within them nuggets of wordplay worthy of Gilbert and Sullivan. Submariners are introduced with a take on the traditional sea shanty, while other songs skew more firmly towards more “traditional” modern musical theatre construction.

Perhaps the most outlandish number, in many ways, is the Act II opener, as a phalanx of Nazis sing ‘Das Übermensch’ in the style of modern, Rihanna-style pop. It is at this point that Ben Stones’ set design – which for Act I appears to be nothing more than a blueprint-inspired design flanked by red brick exits into the wings – begins to reveal that it too, like the mystery airman, has mysteries secreted on its person.

And Act II arrives flush with incident. With the mission at risk after things go wrong in Spain, and the prospect that the team in London might have a mole, the plot really steps up from what had already felt like an incident-filled Act I. It is during these moments that Hodgson really comes into her own, and Cumming has his chance to match her. Director Robert Hastie keeps up the pace throughout, ensuring that laughs and tension play off against each other to great effect.

The climax of the show contains many visual surprises that really take advantage of the increased stage size (and budget) available to Operation Mincemeat as a fully fledged West End show. The finale is even crazier, sillier and more outlandish than the rest of the show preceding it. But still, it takes the time to address a question that had been hinted at throughout.

While creating their fake Major Martin, the naval intelligence team never really considered who their body had been before. His name was Glyndwr Michael and, though now his grave in Spain acknowledges his service after death, Operation Mincemeat deservedly lets Britain know of the man who saved so many lives after his own death.

It is that combination of heart, along with all the madcap tomfoolery preceding it, that encourages one to hope that Operation Mincemeat will be a West End resident for some time to come. Around the corner, another former Fringe show, The Play That Goes Wrong, is coming up to its 10th anniversary. It is not hard to imagine that this crazy tale of wartime sleight-of-hand could achieve a similar longevity. It certainly deserves to.

Scott Matthewman