Operation Mincemeat

As proof that super shows can come in small packages, it’s a pleasure to welcome Operation Mincemeat to a West End too often characterised by musical bloating. And how nice to see this oddly touching historical musical in an enlarged production from directorial maestro Robert Hastie (Standing at the Sky’s Edge) that nonetheless retains the quirky sensibility that from its inception has given this long-gestating venture its spark.

The West End upgrade results in a scenic razzmatazz that would have been unlikely on the fringe while giving such real-life personages as Ewen Montagu and Ian Fleming their due

I first caught the show at a sold-out matinee during one of three runs at Southwark Playhouse, following on from its 2019 premiere at the New Diorama (who commissioned it) but before its further berth last year at the Riverside Studios.

The result rebuffs in a single stroke those worried that London musicals exist merely to honour one or another back catalogue or film titles often lazily displaced to the stage.

And when Malone, playing a sweet-souled secretary, deliberately slows the pace to sing a plaintive number called ‘Dear Bill’, you feel as if you’re watching an Olivier Award in the making. After all, Sheridan Smith won her second Olivier in comparable epistolary circumstances in the Terence Rattigan play Flare Path, premiered around the time this show is set.

The score traverses periods and styles to accommodate audiences of all ages that keep one foot in Noël Coward and Monty Python while advancing with the other towards the modern day.

We hear the determination of those ‘Born to Lead’, as the opening number puts it, alongside patter songs and sea shanties that pause to reference the biological properties of a newt one minute and the ingredients needed for sangria the next.

The West End upgrade results in a scenic razzmatazz that would have been unlikely on the fringe while giving such real-life personages as Ewen Montagu and Ian Fleming their due.

The Second Act begins with a Producers-esque extravaganza that leads with time to the sort of exultant finale (‘Did We Do It?’) of which that show’s Max Bialystock would be proud. I don’t know if this show will last 33 years at this address, as The Woman in Black did before it, but I can’t imagine a giddier way to pass the night – or, just maybe, many years.