‘It feels completely unbelievable. And, also, like the cumulation of everything we’ve been working towards for all these years,” says Natasha Hodgson, who along with Zoe Roberts, David Cumming and Felix Hagan make up theatre company SpitLip. They all seem dazed and delighted by the news that their musical, Operation Mincemeat, will be heading to the West End next year, for a run in the Fortune theatre, which has been home to The Woman in Black for the past 33 years.
Operation Mincemeat is a story about an audacious if morally muddy episode in British espionage history. In 1943, in order to persuade the Nazis to divert their forces away from Sicily, two British intelligence officers – Ewen Montagu and Charles Cholmondeley – planted falsified documents on the dead body of a homeless man which they dressed as an airman and floated ashore in Spain in the hope that the documents would fall into enemy hands. To make the scenario convincing they manufactured an identity for their airman, who they named Captain William Martin, including a taste for the theatre and a fictional fiancee.
In the show Hodgson plays Montagu as an uber-confident product of Oxbridge and the English public school system, while Cumming plays the deeply geeky Cholmondeley, who comes up with the scheme drawing on a suggestion by Ian Fleming. There are showboating coroners, a recurring joke about newts as well as unexpectedly heartfelt songs about grief and the emotional toll of war.
The company has been working on the show since 2017. Hodgson, Cumming and Roberts had previously worked together as part of Kill the Beast, a theatre company with a fondness for comedy horror, while Hagan is a composer, musician and singer in the band Felix Hagan and the Family. They knew they wanted to write a musical together but lacked a good story, until Hodgson’s brother pointed them towards an episode of the Stuff You Should Know podcast about Operation Mincemeat.
It was perfect, says Hodgson. “It was about spies. And the complicated nature of being British. And what our leaders are supposed to do and what they actually do. And what national pride means to you. And should it mean anything? And how much of history is told by the winners.” They also saw the potential for comedy in a story that was “full of stupid, surreal nonsense that really spoke to us”.
They devised the show together, initially without a director or a choreographer, or even a full-length mirror, requiring Roberts to choreograph one of the big numbers while looking at her reflection in a framed poster on the wall of Cumming’s flat, “which said ‘life is gay in Whitley Bay’”, he adds.
They opened the show at the 80-seat New Diorama in 2019 and went on to win the Stage Debut award. Three sell-out runs followed at Southwark Playhouse and, earlier this year, at Riverside Studios.
Over this time they have continued to tinker with the show. They added new songs and created more space to pay tribute to Glyndwr Michael, the troubled young man whose death allowed the story to take place. Since their original run, they have acquired a devoted fanbase, with many people returning to see the show multiple times. “It’s very humbling in a way. We’ve made lots of shows before in various guises, but this is the first time it feels like the show is bigger than the four of us,” says Cumming.
The Operation Mincemeat story has previously been documented by Montagu himself in his book The Man Who Never Was and in Ben Macintyre’s gripping 2010 book which was the basis for the recent film Operation Mincemeat, directed by John Madden and starring Colin Firth as Montagu.
SpitLip have developed a relationship with some of the descendants of the people involved, including Montagu’s grandchildren. “They’ve given the show not just a seal of approval, but a ringing endorsement, which gives you this feeling of emotional momentum,” says Hagan.
The company are effusive about the support they received from the New Diorama and the Lowry in Salford to develop the show. “It’s a little victory for those subsidised venues who are pouring their very hard-won funds into new work,” says Roberts.
“We’re really proud of the fact that it’s come from this fringy grassroots background,” she says, and they hope to maintain that spirit in its West End incarnation – though now they have both a choreographer in Jenny Arnold and a director in Rob Hastie, who says he has been a fan since the beginning and has been helping to develop the show since its run at Riverside Studios. “I’m hugely looking forward to getting back into the room with SpitLip and the company,” says Hastie. “They’re everything you hope a gang like that will be – innovative, creative, collaborative, daring, excellent taste in rehearsal snacks.”
It’s both “scary and exciting to see it reach its final form”, says Hodgson. “And to do that in the West End, it’s just mind-blowing.” And if Colin Firth ever needs work as an understudy, she adds, the invitation is open.
Operation Mincemeat is at the Fortune theatre, London, 29 March–8 July
