Mincemeat.
The ingredients usually include spice, fat, nuts, sugar, fruits, and…. meat. The term for this food comes from 15th Century England, when this mincemeat was made to preserve meat. (I am getting this information from the Food Network, so if it is incorrect, blame them). What is Operation Mincemeat, you might ask?
A really good musical.
Oh, and also a British deception plan during World War II to trick the Nazis into thinking the Allied powers were going to invade Sardinia instead of Sicily. That’s kind of irrelevant, though.
Just kidding. It’s kind of what the whole musical is about.
It is interesting how the title of the operation relates to the tool used to carry out the deception– a preserved body. A deemed “useless,” body or “The Man Who Never Was,” became one of the most important aspects of the Allied powers winning the Second World War. A crazy idea by Charles Cholmondeley or “the bug man”– creating a faux drowned soldier revealing faux invasion plans– defied expectations and successfully diverted the German army from Sicily. The same Cholmondeley who stated that newts did, in fact, have anuses and a fear of death, he’s not so sure about.
What does it mean to be a spy?
First, being a spy is pretty cool and makes you seem mysterious. If you can keep a secret, at least.
But is it worth it: to deceive those who have sworn their trust in you? John Bevan certainly thought that this choice was worth it for Ewan Montagu. Adamant that Montagu was betraying the British military, Bevan set Hester Leggatt on a mission to discover if Montagu was stealing classified information about Operation Mincemeat to conspire with his Soviet Communist brother.
Because secret files about the operation were turning up lost and Montagu was oh-so calm about it, audience members could easily believe that he devised a plan to stop this mission in its tracks. This was so believable that not only Hester was against him, but soon came Jean and Charlie after. The presence of spying in this operation created an atmosphere of suspicion and distrust. It created a circle of deceit within a group of people who passionately planned their own deception. With lives on the line, who can you trust?
Was Levan so jaded by past broken trust that he felt he must question everyone’s intentions? Even though Montagu was readily prepared and excited for this mission, lies and duplicity were too common during this time, making it hard to hold out faith in anyone.
The musical hilariously represented spying in a way that reflected tropes of the Elizabethan Comedy of Errors through elements like mistaken identity, (William Martin’s faux identity), misdelivered letters (the telephone/briefcase bit), and characters “just missing,” each other, (this one is kind of a stretch, but it made me think of when Charlie kept trying to look in Montagu’s briefcases but kept getting interrupted and jumping when someone came in). The playwrights weaved these tropes into the theme of spying to give this heavy-weighted circumstance some chuckles. I giggled a lot.
To some, Operation Mincemeat could be considered a play within a play. Sanford Meisner famously coins acting as “living truthfully under imaginary circumstances.” Well, although Glyndwr Michael was not alive, he was living “dead-fully,” as Bill Martin under imaginary circumstances. An imaginary birth certificate, engagement, and really exciting night bar hopping. That’s close, right? It can be argued that Bill was an actor in the British intelligence’s play. The British Intelligence were the directors. And the costume designers. And the playwrights, too. The Nazi Army were their target audience and the waters of Huelva, Spain were their set.
Sounds pretty theatrical to me.
Operation Mincemeat was a hilarious retelling of an iconic historical moment, rich in character, musicality, and campiness. Truly a breath of fresh air and a show I don’t think I could ever get tired of!
All for now,
xoxo Gossip Girl
Theatre in London U of A 