As many of my classmates are aware, I used to listen to a podcast called “History This Week” and they would release an episode about a cool historical story that happened years ago on the week of the episode’s release. One week, the episode was about Operation Mincemeat, so when I found out that we would be seeing a musical in London dedicated to this crazy true story, I was very excited. Without further ado, let’s take a bite of this minced meaty goodness.
“Operation Mincemeat” by David Cumming, Felix Hagan, Natasha Hodgson, and Zoë Roberts is a hilarious (mostly) true musical about the brilliant military minds who turned the tide of World War 2 by planting fake invasion plans on a dead body to fool the Nazis. This wild story gets even crazier when you add in big musical numbers, heartfelt characters, and techno-raving Nazis. The story carried over really well, but I felt like they rushed through the actual “operation” pretty quickly. By the end of act 1, the mission (from what I could tell) was complete, so I had no idea what to expect for act 2. Luckily, I was in for a treat because this act stepped it up a notch and delivered an absolutely majestic grand finale.
I absolutely adored some of the character choices and the secret-government-style set worked really well for the set changes and base location. The director made a choice to gender bend some of the main characters so that Montagu, the leading man, and Johnny, the chief commander, were performed by women, and Hester, the older secretary, was performed by a man. Often when this happens in theatre, the characters are played as a joke because “haha man is pretending to be a woman.” However, this choice was so refreshing and worked so well that the emotional moments still hit hard and the characters felt like complete people, not just gender-bending jokes.
Overall, I adored this play. The acting was amazing, the set design was excellent, and the songs were fantastic. Shout out to our beloved American pilot William and a genuine acknowledgement to Glyndwr Michael, the man who served his country as Major Bill Martin.
Cheers!
Theatre in London U of A 