Borough market was unlike any of the other ones we have seen so far. This one was solely centered around food! As soon as you enter it is bustling full of people and all five of your sense are immediately pinging glorious food options from every direction.

If I could’ve bought one of everything, I would have. The booths selling cheeses caught my attention quickly (I love dairy, sue me) and my eyes turned into cartoon hearts popping out of my head. I also found myself levitating over to where the sourdough booth was. There was an abundance of freshly baked loaves of sourdough as well as hand made Bavarian pretzels. If you’re a fan of sourdough, then you know just how much time and effort it takes to make one loaf, let alone mass produce it.

I then made my way over to the area selling hot meals. I wandered back and forth over and over again because I simply couldn’t decide what I wanted for lunch, I wanted everything. I was in awe of not only the amount of booths there were but the diversity. For the first time in my life I saw people selling Iraqi cuisine, Japanese food, BBQ, seafood, and more side by side.

Of course, the dairy freak that I am, I got a heaping of mac and cheese with au gratin. Was it delicious? yes. Was I immediately bloated and exhausted afterwards? also yes. Would I make the same decision given a second chance? HELL yes.

I did however get a bit overstimulated. I don’t do well in shoulder-to-shoulder crowds where I feel like I can’t move. There was no available seating to eat and the line for the bathroom was miserably long. I did however, still think it was worth it and I had a great time with some great eats.

As an AVID roller coaster goer I thought I would write about my experience to thorpe park.

I had the best day ever, I loveeee roller coasters so when I was supported in my idea of going I was thrilled.

It was freezing all day though so I wish I wore a slightly warmer outfit, oh well.

There were 6 big roller coasters that we went on and they were so much fun!

The first one we went on was like the powder keg at silver dollar city and it went from 0-80mph in less than 2 seconds. Can I just say, probably the worst feeling ever, and of course we did that one first. I have simply never felt the feeling I felt on that ride, it was horrifying but sooooo fun. The drop was straight down and those are my favorite.

We went 2 where our legs were dangling and they just didn’t have seat belts??? Like if my thing that kept me in came up, I would have flown out! So got a little scared about that but they were so much fun I wasn’t thinking about it after the first drop. The second ride like that that we went on it was POURING rain. It was the coldest/funnest thing I have ever done, I was absolutely drenched when I got off because I had to sit on the outside.

One we rode called colossus was the worst experience of my life, my head would stop banging back and forth and literally thought my ears were going to be bleeding by the end of it. It was awful.

The last one we went on was called Saw and it was SO much fun. It was based off the saw movies and at the beginning you’re in the pitch black then just drop straight down and there’s a little ride inside in the pitch black before you get to the actually ride and go completely 90 degrees upward then have a 100 degree drop, which yes was awesome.

There was one little ride that made me so dizzy I thought I was going to barf but we powered through.

At the end of the day we were all so sore and dead that the train rides home were brutal and still don’t quite feel rested but so worth it.

Other than that! The experience was SO much fun and I wish I could do that every day.

Borough market was not what I was expecting in the best way!

I was incredibly overwhelmed with how many different types of food there was. I was very overwhelmed with how many people there were. I feel like every market we’ve been to has been PACKED, so maybe that’s just the norm here.

I was taking forever to decide what to eat because I wanted to make sure I knew all of my options before deciding what to get. Me and a couple friends walked around the whole place twice just discussing what to get and could not chose! Finally, I decided I was going to get Japanese ramen and oh my goodness it was fantastic. I don’t remember the name of the place but it was a lovely meal with chicken ramen ( I got no pickled mushrooms because ew) and then I got a side of rice because I wanted to try it. The rice was not good if I’m being honest and I am the biggest rice person in the entire world so I was SHOCKED I didn’t like it; probably the first rice I’ve ever tried that I didn’t like.

I was stunned at the lack of water there. A lot of stands weren’t even seeling it and I ended up getting it in a glass bottle, so weird.

The venue itself was gorgeous, I loved all of the lights hanging from the celing and the whole area was just so fun to look around.

I saw this stand with like every dead sea creature/ fish you could think of and as someone who is not a seafood fan, I almost had a heart attack ( to be dramatic) I was very taken aback by that place. Does one just order an octopus whole???

Overall- awesome and would love to go back to try other food!

“Operation Mincemeat” being a theatre show and especially a comedy, of course a lot of stuff had to be dramatized and added to make the show enjoyable but many of the things in the musical did actually happen.  Montagu did go on to make a film about Operation Mincemeat and Willie Watkins was a real American pilot that crash landed in Spain on the day of the operation.  The characters’ personalities and actions were exaggerated for comedic effect but most of what is said in the musical is actually true which has been very cool to learn about after watching it.  The way spying was presented in the show was far more simiplier than how I’m sure it is in the real world.  However, if all the complicated parts were shown then the show would be really boring.  I really enjoyed this show’s portrayal of spying.  Spying is kind of a form of theatre and I think the small cast and constantly changing costumes really added to that element of theatre within the show.  Each actor played several roles throughout the play with many quick shifts between characters matching the quick changes spies make on an espionage mission.  Spies just like actors wear costumes and try to play a character to the best of their abilities, they also have a ton of people backing them up behind the scenes.  I think the common belief of what spying is like is much more like acting, while the mission carried out in the show was more on the tech side.  Their mission was to create a believable set essentially to fool the Nazis.  They gathered and created props and costumes to make the soldier look believable and then they employed Haselden as a spy (actor) to convey certain messages, essentially just saying lines.

As a whole, I feel that it is hard to judge the accuracy of any spying operation presented in any media, as having a basis to judge accuracy kind of defeats the basic purpose of the operation. However, Operation Mincemeat I believe could be counted as a fairly accurate portrayal of spywork and espionage, with its roots in an actual and fairly well-documented operation conducted by MI-5 during World War II. 

The show tells a very fun and unique spin on the common spy story, steering itself more towards historical accuracy than dramatization, which itself is oftentimes stranger than what fiction could have been. Through this more historic lens, the show presents a far more sequestered and distant form of spying than the upfront, action thriller something like a James Bond movie would showcase. It portrays espionage work as something done more like a NASA rocket launch, with many people working for long periods of time to make an infallible plan, and having no way to ensure its success after sending it off other than a hope and a prayer. While one would assume that an indirect involvement with the plan would lower the stakes to the audience, as the characters are not the ones directly in danger, the stakes are truly intensified with this presentation, as it makes every small error and unaccounted for situation when planning and creating that much more important, as there is nothing they can do to rectify the situation if it does go wrong. Even some of the show’s more ridiculous or seemingly fictional elements added to increase drama and emotional impact to the story were actually real things about this operation, such as Hester Legatt’s song “Dear Bill” in Act One (utterly fantastic song, by the way) being based off of a real letter that the actual Hester wrote during World War I, or that Ewen Montagu did have a filmmaker brother who was also a communist spy (he was also a Hall of Fame Table Tennis champion, which the musical does not really touch on but I think is too hysterical to leave out). My personal favorite fact of the story that I did not believe was true at the time was how, on the day that MI-5’s body, named William Martin, washed up on the coast of Huelva Spain, an American pilot, named Willie Watkins, crash landed near the same spot as the body was left, lived, and even (according to the creative team behind the play) was present at the autopsy of William Martin. 

In regard to the British operation being a form of theatre, I would have to say that, while many elements of it are definitely theatrical in nature, with the deceptions and the inherently insane, dollar store novel-esque plan that they come up with, the operation itself would not be theatre. In my eyes, there are three types of deception: theatrical, magical, and indistinguishable. Theatrical deception is when performers present the audience with a lie and are able to be fully aware of the lie and how it is being done. Magical deception is when performers present the audience with a lie, knows they are being lied to, but is unable to discern how it is happening. Indistinguishable deception is when performers present the audience with a lie, but are (hopefully) unaware that they are being lied to in the first place. The espionage operation that MI-5 is undertaking in this story is trying to fit into that third category of indistinguishable deception. This is clearly shown in how seriously the generals take the idea of Ewen Montagu leaking information about Mincemeat to his brother, as any word of this plan getting back to the Nazis would invalidate their work and endanger the soldiers in the invasion of Sicily. As the performers (MI-5) do not want their audience (the Nazis) aware they are being lied to, I would say that their operation, while very theatrical, is not theatre. Overall, Operation Mincemeat does a fantastic job at presenting an entertaining and comedic musical while keeping itself rooted in historical accuracy.

This production is given the TPRBS: 6/7.

Turn Hamilton into a comedy, add a dash of satire from The Book of Mormon, sprinkle in a stolen corpse, mix in a few rapping dubstep Nazis, and you get Operation Mincemeat. Winner of the 2024 Olivier Best New Musical Award, this five-man show is going places. This particular author and critic could not get enough of this show. Honest, ridiculously

The deception operation undertaken by British intelligence in the play is somewhat a kind of theatre. Operation Mincemeat does very well to depict the visible romanticism and true values of the British government. They show how the government is portrayed in their society and how their actions affect the reality of their reputation today. The show actively tears down whatever false suave surrounding the heroism of espionage with sarcasm, asides, and clever lyrics. The agents and their plans are considered ridiculous until the very last few scenes of the play when everything works according to plan and their schemes are regarded as heroic genius. However, in this retelling, no one except the 5 people on stage knows how chaotic, impulsive, and poorly together it was planned and executed. Especially because Operation Mincemeat almost did not succeed. 

In Fortune Theatre’s production of Operation Mincemeat, spying and top-secret operations are presented as silly and overpraised. The operation succeeded through luck and bets placed on the enemy. War is a game. Several components of the operation and the lives of many were gambled and moved around. During the production, men and soldiers are spoken about without consideration of their lives because they are thought of as followers and not ‘Born to Lead’ as the first musical number says. Glory and victory are portrayed as the most valuable achievements. Even the officials portrayed as women in this play wish and scramble for the recognition that comes with the glory of winning a war. Everyone wants to be regarded as a hero with cheers, a plaque, a medal, or a ceremony. However, as it is revealed later, the highest honor is power. Power to control a narrative to be recorded for all of time. It is cementing a reputation as a clever master of their lives and career. Charlie and Montegue are completely different due to their pride, accountability, and purpose for carrying out their duty. Lavish receipts, love letters, and suits that is what made Glyndwr’s body seem to be the components of a believable spy, not the man himself.

Gender and sex are other themes of this production with people playing both interchangeably, but noticeably playing roles of the opposite constantly. This was most definitely a theatrical choice I believe for the better. Women are just as important to this operation as men are. I think it has been very intentional to cast women in the role of Montegue since the beginning of this production, which has seen many cast changes. Both the current main for Montague and her understudy are female. It displays the callus reality behind tendencies that come from the performances and perks of the status quo and shows a possibility of anyone filling that performative role of the most powerful. It’s like an alternative-looking class that looks beyond sex and gender. It begs the question, what would have happened differently had there been women in the room where it all happens? Women throughout history have had very little control over their lives and opportunities, even though we are just as cunning, secretive, honorable, capable, and could be as powerful if we were given the same resources and regard. 

From the end of the play, the song ‘Did We Do It?’ sums up the final theme perfectly: “When you write the book, then you’re off the hook. The lies get hidden, sins forgiven, all your misdeeds made from vision.”. This is extremely important and underlies the purpose of this play. A message about accountability and history: Operation Mincemeat came from stealing someone’s corpse and creating an entire narrative, for a ruse. A ruse that could have sentenced hundreds to death. Obtaining the corpse in that matter was illegal and so very unethical. I’m so very glad that they talked about Glyndwr Michael at the end of the production and gave some of the true details of his life and how he was disadvantaged socially and financially from the very start of his life. Even in death, he was considered to be someone who would be unmissed and uncredited.

SPOILERS!!!

In London’s West End Fortune Theatre’s production of Operation Mincemeat, spying is presented as a bit of a joke. Montagu didn’t seem to take the mission seriously saying everything will be fine, even if there were reasons to worry like when they found out another Ally plane crashed in the same spot on the same day with the same name and the best coroner in Spain looked over their dead soldier that didn’t actually die from drowning like he should have. Also during the entire song where the agent in Spain is trying to convince the Spanish coroner to keep the briefcase, all the actors got tangled in the phone lines because of the dancing. They kept switching their phones and their hats and actors kept coming on the stage pointing out the absurdity of everything by saying “could this get any more confusing?” At one point in the song someone actually comes in to sing happy birthday with a cake. Even though spying was treated as a bit of a joke, they also knew it was also important to be secretive so that others did not find out what they were doing.

I did not think that Operation Mincemeat, undertaken by the British Intelligence, was a form of theater. Instead, I think it was more like a magic act and they even said that in the show. For something to be a type of theater it has to be enjoyed or at least seen/acknowledged by people, but the operation in this production had to be kept a secret. It reminded me of the movie “Now You See Me” which is a movie about magicians who trick the government by doing a year-long magic trick. I was reminded of this movie because of the time it took to complete their trick. This is important because it shows that even though Operation Mincemeat took place over several months, it still can be recognised as a magic trick.

In conclusion I would say that the original Operation was not a kind of theater but it did have the potential to become theater if the story was only told to the people. Montagu knew this which is why he decided to write a book about it, which then got adapted to be a movie 3 years later and eventually adapted to stage. The first stage production premiered in several London theatres beginning in 2019, finally opening at the Fortune Theater in March 2023.

Make a musical about World War 2 and it is the funniest thing ever?

Turns out you can do exactly that.

Operation Mincemeat is a new musical performing at Fortunes Theatre. With its debut in 2019, it quickly grew to be a favorite, having won the Laurance Olivier Award for Best Musical in 2024. It was performed in a proscenium-style theatre, and I watched it from the highest seats. 

Let’s start with some context. Operation Mincemeat was a real-life British deception operation, that disguised the Allied invasion of Sicily during World War two. This deception operation consisted of dressing up a corpse as an officer of the Royal Marines, planting misleading information, and dropping it off in the water, in hopes of fooling the Germans into moving their troops. AND IT WORKED. 

The musical is based on the real-life events described above but with a comedic twist. With a cast of only five, they were able to convey so many different characters, and in a way I didn’t expect. The show starts with a bunch of people in suits, ready to pitch an idea. But something is different about it. The women in the scene are also in men’s suits, and talking about how men run the world. I quickly realized after the second scene, that all the actors were cross-dressing. And it worked so well. Some actors played their typical gendered roles throughout, with the occasional change in gender, and some kept the cross-dressing for their main role. It’s hard to explain, but it was eye-opening to see a show of this scale, make such an artistic choice. Especially since the only physical distinction of characters was costume and accessories. When actor George Jennings played a secretary, there wasn’t a wig to make him look more feminine. He just embodied the feminine character, put on a dress, and it didn’t ruin the believability of the story at all. This whole show is a dramatic interpretation of a story about World War two. It already was not a “realistic”.

Which brings me to talk about the incredible acting from the cast. I have never seen a cast switch between so many different characters in one show. It was amazing to see how quickly an actor would transition from one character to a different one. It didn’t matter if it was a man playing a woman, because we saw the character. Gender wasn’t important in the telling of the story, and I love that. During Hester’s Leggat’s solo, the actor Christian Andrews convincingly brought all of us to tears over the life of an older woman whose experienced love and loss. 

Let’s talk about the set design for a second. Even though I was at the very top, I still had a decent view of the set. I was impressed with how much was packed into the set. There was a TON of scene changes, and the set provided clever design to create those scenes and it’s transitions. Everything was multipurpose. The stairs were the most multipurpose set piece in the whole show, serving as different bars, a street light, a barrier, and a transition piece. It was so useful to store away props and set up different scenes depending on where it was placed on the stage. This set design also did well in camouflaging doors and lights. I was amazed with how well the doors were hidden, in the back wall and the chalkboard.

Overall, it was interesting to see how theatrical the actual operation was. They created a person, with a name and a backstory. With given circumstances, as we say in the theatre. This team had to make this corpse a real person to deceive a group of people into believing a lie. Which is what theatre is in a way. Actors pretend to be someone else to achieve being believable to their audience. They went shopping for receipts, creating documents, and creating the life of a man who was never alive. Solely to fool the Germans into believing a story that ended up saving so many lives

Operation Mincemeat is such an incredible show. I have taken so much inspiration from its set design and storytelling. I hope to see more shows that challenge me to think outside the box of what theatre can do.

Farewell friends!!

Yesterday we watched Operation Mincemeat, a comedic musical of a British operation to trick Hitler into moving German troops off of Sicily so that allies could move in easily. It is actually based off of a true story! It takes place in 1943 and MI5 needs some plan to get the German army to move its troops from Sicily to a neighboring Italian island, Sardegna. Sicily was a key location that the allies really wanted to gain control of, but couldn’t due to the large number of enemy troops defending it. The plan devised by character Charles “Charlie” Cholmondeley was to send a fake British soldier’s dead body carrying fake confidential plans of an allied plan to invade Sardegna to Spain. They found a corpse and faked extensive documentation making him seem like a British soldier with a whole backstory. They planted their evidence in a briefcase attached to him and sent him via submarine right to the Spanish coast. When Spanish police find the body, German spies of which there were plenty would find the fake invasion plans and report the news to the German army. The plan and hope were that this would lead Hitler to command his army to move off of Sicily to Sardegna to protect it. Of course, Sardegna didn’t need any protection, as Sicily was what the allies were really after. Despite certain complications, the plan was successful! Hitler moved almost all his troops off Sicily, allowing allied troops to move right in with virtually no bloodshed, and gain control of Sicily.

I thought the play was great—it seemed well written, the acting was great and hilarious, and the set was interesting, too. It was written by five people who were the original cast, but unfortunately not the actors we saw. It would have been cool to see the writers perform, but I can’t complain about the cast we got. I believe our Charlie was new to the part, seeing as how I don’t think I see him on the cast list on the website, and during final bows the rest of the cast singled him out for an applause. On their Instagram they posted a welcome to the cast for a George Jennings, who I believe was who we saw. I thought he was such a great actor, and I really like his portrayal of Charlie. I also loved Christian Andrews as Hester Leggatt. His performance, particularly her solo about her lost love was so amazing. Overall, it was just a really fun and funny play, where you are laughing along and you can tell the cast is having so much fun too. I think it’s a great play to go see, I highly recommend!

In Operation Mincemeat, spying is apparently very common. The characters, who are MI5, mention spies from Britain, Germany, and the USSR. The whole operation is dependent on a German spy being in Spanish police. And even when the plan starts going awry, they never seem concerned that their information won’t be spied on. When they are creating their fake soldier, they have to think about every detail to ensure there won’t be any room for suspicion. They fill the man’s briefcase with the fake invasion plans of course, but they also have to create personal items that make the scene seem more legitimate. They go shopping for him and even create a fake fiancée for him. This process was just like creating background for a character you’re playing. They had to thing about the character in depth to make their fake solider seem as real as possible. Similarly, this is the goal and process of an actor trying to bring their character to life, though I suppose their situation was a bit more life-and-death.