Operation Mincemeat at the Southwark Playhouse
(Picture: Handout)On the list of unlikely subjects for musical theatre, using a disguised corpse to fox Hitler must rank… well, just behind Springtime for Hitler in The Producers, I suppose. But here is SpitLip’s deliciously rackety show, based on a true and improbably successful WW2 operation, back for a triumphant third run, after a premiere at the New Diorama in 2019 and a sellout success at Southwark in 2021.
Three of the four writer/composers are among the five-strong cast, romping through a plethora of musical styles and lots of ironic anachronisms, celebrating and mocking the posh eccentrics who ran the UK war effort. With a revisionist, feminist streak and the energy of a hyper-sophisticated student show, it shares DNA with Six the Musical and London’s short-lived recent hit Pride and Prejudice (Sort Of). Pretty good company to be in.
It’s 1943 and MI5 needs to direct Nazi forces away from the Allied invasion of Sicily. Nerdy Charles Cholmondeley suggests planting decoy papers on a body disguised as a pilot, to be washed up in neutral Spain: brash Ewen Montagu finds him the fresh cadaver of a homeless Welshman. Matronly Hester Leggett and feisty Jean Leslie help make the airman’s backstory convincing. A bonkers plan, but it worked.
The tunes range from clever patter songs through a sea shanty and a vampy nightclub number to a truly surprising Nazi boyband routine (yes, really). Donnacadh O’Briain’s direction and Jenny Arnold’s choreography are far more sophisticated than the loose feel of the show suggests.
Among the co-creators, Zoe Roberts winningly plays steel-jawed authoritarians and hopeless incompetents (including a young Ian Fleming, constantly trying to bring ideas from the later Bond books and movies into the 1939-45 conflict). The distractingly top-knotted David Cumming goes wildly over the top as Cholmondeley. And Natasha Hodgson toys cleverly with audience expectation as the dick-swinging Montagu.
Interesting that they all mostly play men. The fourth creator, Felix Hagan, doesn’t appear, but the quartet take collective responsibility for script, music and lyrics. Meanwhile in the female parts, Claire-Marie Hall belts out the high notes as a spirited Jean and Jak Malone is remarkably moving as Hester.
This show takes you by surprise at every turn, with many clever ideas that come off, and some that don’t, but which still make you smile. Perhaps it isn’t so odd that Operation Mincemeat became a musical after all. It was the subject of a 1950 book by former cabinet minister Duff Cooper, and a history by Ewen Montagu that became the 1956 film The Man Who Never Was.
A forthcoming film starring Colin Firth is based on Ben Macintyre’s 2009 history. Also in 2009, the theatre company Cardboard Citizens created a play celebrating the homeless man, Glyndwr Michael, whose corpse was used without thought for his dignity or his family, but who in death saved many lives. He is ceremoniously named again here, in this larky fringe hit with surprising depths.
