London's 2024 Best New Musical Olivier winner Operation Mincemeat might just be the little show that could. The work of U.K. theatrical comedy group SpitLip, the show started in tiny, 80-seat Off-Off-West End theatres before becoming an unlikely West End hit and winning London's top theatrical honor. And now, perhaps against all odds, this surprise hit has crossed the pond to Broadway on the strength of some pretty enthusiastic word of mouth, hoping to be Broadway's next hit British import. The show is currently in previews at the John Golden Theatre, where it will officially open March 20.
But as far as hit musicals go, it would be difficult to call Mincemeat a sure bet. Broadway loves a British import鈥�The Phantom of the Opera and Les Mis茅rables are certainly on the list of the Main Stem's biggest hits ever. But Mincemeat is not exactly Les Miz. And that might be one of its primary strengths.
The show draws its title from Operation Mincemeat, a real-life World War II scheme in which British Intelligence officials successfully diverted attention from a planned Allied invasion of Sicily. They did this in a very, well, macabre way: They dressed up a dead man鈥檚 corpse to look like an officer in the Royal Marines and planted correspondence on his person that falsely indicated the Allied Powers planned to invade Greece and Sardinia. Then they expelled the body from a submarine in Spanish waters, in hopes that local authorities would show the seemingly secret military correspondence to the Nazis and throw them off the scent. And, amazingly, it worked. And it also had the positive side effect of helping overthrow fascism in Italy.
It鈥檚 one of those stories so unlikely, so stranger than fiction, that it really seems just like that鈥攆iction. 鈥淓arly on, we considered having some kind of truth claxon or alarm that went off every time something seemed unbelievable, but was, in fact, the God鈥檚 honest truth,鈥� says David Cumming, one of three SpitLip members also co-starring in the musical, along with Zo毛 Roberts and Natasha Hodgson, all reprising their West End performances. The trio met and began making theatre together while students at Warwick University, forming a group called Kill the Beast with some other university friends post graduation.
The Kill the Beast crew created and performed in four non-musical shows, notably their 2013 Edinburgh Fringe favorite The Boy Who Kicked Pigs. Cumming, Roberts, and Hodgson eventually decided they wanted to create a musical, splitting off from Kill the Beast and joining up with Hodgson's bandmate Felix Hagan (who takes the lead on Mincemeat's music while staying out of the footlights) to form SpitLip. Operation Mincemeat is the team's first musical鈥攖he group's first finished project, in fact. And what a debut it is.
As for that truth alarm, the idea got dropped because it would have been going off almost constantly. 鈥淲e added literally nothing,鈥� Cumming tells us. 鈥淭here is not a single ludicrous detail that you see in the show that is not true.鈥�
鈥淲e had an early sort of scratch performance of some material, and we had feedback cards because we wanted audiences to tell us how we were doing and how it was shaping up鈥攚e鈥檇 never written a musical before,鈥� remembers Roberts. 鈥淚t went down really well, but we got several comments that basically said, 鈥業t鈥檚 all fun, but you can鈥檛 make up stuff about history. It鈥檚 the war.鈥� The audience truly couldn鈥檛 fathom that this bizarre story was real. 鈥淲e actually had to pare down the chaos and the insanity.鈥�
Amongst the wild details that got left on the cutting room floor was the ex-race-car driver hired to transport the corpse to Scotland where it would board the submarine; the driver was extremely shortsighted but refused to wear glasses and nearly crashed into a cinema en route. Plus, midway through the journey, he paused for a photo op, smiling and eating sandwiches while sitting atop the canister holding the corpse. You know, as one does.
There was also extended, gruesome details about the corpse itself, left out of the musical perhaps because it was especially wild (and a tad gross). As Cumming shares: 鈥淚t wasn鈥檛 in the best of states. And they had to get it dressed up, but obviously it was in rigor mortis. They basically had to hairdryer his feet and stretch them out so he鈥檇 be loose enough to shove into shoes. But they couldn鈥檛 do it for too long, because then he鈥檇 start to decompose too much.鈥� One imagines the high-stepping production number that scene could have become.
The team says it鈥檚 not all about the comedy, though. When they first came across the story via a history podcast, the group was floored by how obscure it had been, particularly considering the level of continuing fascination with World War II in the U.K. and beyond. Of the many stories taught in schools about the global conflict, Operation Mincemeat isn鈥檛 even a footnote. 鈥淚t鈥檚 a reclamation of our own history, a reminder that there are other stories out there,鈥� says Cumming. 鈥淏ehind the established narrative鈥攈istory is written by the victors鈥攁re many, many hundreds of thousands of stories of the 鈥榮maller鈥� people who don鈥檛 matter. But they do matter!鈥�
To Hodson, underneath all the zany onstage antics, there is a real commentary: 鈥淚t鈥檚 impossible and unethical to do a story about World War II [now] and not hit on the fact that the world was entirely run by aristocratic white men. We wanted to write a show that was a celebration of this amazing, crazy story, but that very much pointed at the flaws in that logic as well.鈥� The team was struck by how this story stood apart from most of the more established World War II narratives, which tend to feature brilliant war heroes making brilliant plans that brilliantly work.
Operation Mincemeat was more of a fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants situation, which Spitlip suspect is actually more in line with how World War II actually went down.
And that鈥檚 also why Hogdson and Roberts, both cis women, are playing mostly male characters in Operation Mincemeat. 鈥淲e wanted to make sure there were women on stage as a general rule, because the show is told by a group of people that is dominated by male voices,鈥� Roberts says. 鈥淏ut it allows us more power to satirize and to shine a light on this idea of privileged masculinity. And what鈥檚 joyful about it is in the space of three seconds, no one cares. The audience comes along with us and believes in these people as characters, and they forget about the fact that it鈥檚 a lady in a suit. And that shows that all this gender stuff is performed anyway.鈥�
鈥淲e never wanted to be in drag, either male or females,鈥� adds Hodgson. 鈥淚t鈥檚 not a point of comedy for us that men are dressed as women. We managed to talk about that subject without it feeling explicitly like a show about gender, because it鈥檚 not.鈥�
What Operation Mincemeat is, perhaps surprisingly, is a bonafide musical comedy. 鈥淭here鈥檚 something about putting music to things that instantly accesses a level of emotional connection that is unlike anything else,鈥� says Hodgson. 鈥淚t adds this magic to the narrative, this kind of profundity that both helps us tell this with the comedy, but also helps us hugely with the emotional heft and depth of these people and what they had to go through.鈥�
Though there鈥檚 been some amount of discourse around whether or not this show is too British for Broadway. But SpitLip says they looked mostly to American comedy musicals for inspiration, like The Producers, Guys and Dolls, and Legally Blonde.
鈥淓very time we鈥檇 write an opening number,鈥� remembers Hagan, 鈥渨e鈥檇 get to the end and ask if it was as good as 鈥極migod You Guys鈥� from Legally Blonde.鈥�
Adds Hodgson, laughing: 鈥淭he answer is still no, but that鈥檚 okay.鈥�
