Meet the Man Behind the Many Looks of OPERATION MINCEMEAT- Ben Stones

Operation Mincemeat is the small but mighty new musical that has taken over the Golden Theatre this Spring. Though it arrives on Broadway with two Olivier Awards (including Best New Musical) and its acclaimed London leading players in tow, the show in fact has very humble origins.

Operation Mincemeat, written and composed by the comedy troupe, SpitLip, began as a tiny (and tiny-budgeted) production at London’s New Diorama Theatre before playing sold out runs at Southwark Playhouse and Riverside Studios. It finally premiered in the West End on May 9, 2023, at the Fortune Theatre, where it continues to play to standing-room-only crowds and has cultivated one of one of London’s most fervent fanbase. It tells the wildly improbable and hilarious true story of the covert operation that turned the tide of WWII. 

Ben Stones has been along for the ride, first as a loyal fan, then stepping in as the show's scenic and Costume Designer. He's checking in with BroadwayWorld to tell us all about his process and incredible Mincemeat journey so far.

Welcome to Broadway! How are previews going so far?

We are in full Broadway musical-style previews in the sense that there's a lot to sort. Somebody described the show like whack-a-mole yesterday. It's so incredibly well written and paced that there isn't really much room for error. And when the show is incredible, it's an absolute testament to the cast and the crew and the stage management and literally all the hidden people creating the deception of the show. It's a real incredible feat. We did this two years ago in London, so I'd sort of forgotten the insane amount of work that actually goes into finessing the show.

Can you tell me a bit how you came to work on this project?

My journey to this is quite peculiar actually. I think it was January 2020 and I was having a really terrible time on a show and a friend messaged me out of the blue and told me that there's a show that has just had five star reviews at the New Diorama Theater. It's gone to Southwark Playhouse in its next iteration and let's go and see it. I remember thinking, "What?" I just wrote back to him, said, "I'd rather go for a beer. Can we just do that? I don't want to see any theatre." But we went...

It was not the version that it is now. They'd been working, they've been incredibly diligent in how they've dramatized the show, the writers and the producer, giving them the space and time to workshop this for many years before they were allowed a big production.

So from January 2020 to May 2023, I saw the show purely as a fan, seven times! I just kept going and taking friends. There's 87 characters in the show and you think every single one of them is fully rounded and you can't understand when the cast bow at the end, how you're not seeing all of these people. 

And then completely by a total twist of fate, I ended up meeting Spitlip because a director I work with a lot, Robert Hastie, was asked to direct the show. And then I met them and I hit it off with them actually. And it was really, it's strange to meet your heroes in that sense. And so when I came to design the show, I still couldn't believe I got asked to do it. I still to this day can't believe I'm sat on Broadway just because a friend took me to see a show.

It's fate!

I have to believe that it is, because we share the same visual, dumb sense of humor and I can really respond well to what they want and translate their ideas to visuals. But also I think because I'd seen it like all those times, when I started I formed a version in my head like even from the first time I saw it. And so it was just sort of building and building with no intention that I thought I'd ever, ever get to do this. And so every day I kind of pinch myself that my favorite musical is something I'm part of. 

And what were those first instincts for you?

It was more about the framing of it and like being in a war room, so it really plunged the audience into 1940s war planning and deception. But also being really deceptive with the audience. I can't give much away and that has been our great MO of the show is the keeping the mystery of what it is. And that in the simplicity of our show, there is insane spectacle hidden within it. That's what I love every night. The audience is coming in expecting one thing but they leave screaming, having cheered for many other things. It was about sort of giving it a good framing device, but enough leeway for them to play with things. 

Let's talk about those 87 characters. What are the challenges in designing something like this?

Well, it started with a lot of hats and it worked. But in the West End, we had to up some of the visuals so that much further away in like upper circles or dress circles, people could see full rendered characters. But the speed in which they do these characters is breakneck. One thing we learned coming to Broadway is I couldn't really make the set bigger because it would make the journey that someone runs from stage right around the back of the set to come straight on as another character in a new costume longer. 

One of the most impressive performers for that in the show is Zoë Roberts, who's one of the writers. She walks off one wing and comes round on the other in a completely new character and new persona in the space of... I think our quickest change is like 1.5 seconds or 2 seconds.

That's wild!

I have this deep love and appreciation for magic costumes and ripaways. I learned a lot of those tricks early on in my career by being a fan of magic essentially. I mean, it takes a lot of work from makers to the rehearsals and it goes wrong. And then you finesse it until it keeps a more hit rate of 100%. But we use those techniques in the show to allow people to keep moving and changing and again keeping the mystery of how many people are in the show. 

What do you think will surprise audiences about this show?

I think that one of the unsung beauties of Mincemeat is how it's baked in with a sort of play around gender and queerness. It's not like some shows that just added on, but it's baked into their way that they create work and the writing of it. I think it's one of its greatest strengths. It's like the jumping between genders of who people play and what they do and just how totally believable and how irrelevant gender can be sometimes in it. 

What have you enjoyed the most about working on this project?

This has been a match made in heaven for me, the way they push me to the edge with what they need. Now I just love watching the audience love them and applaud things I've put in the show with them. And I think that's now one of my greatest joys now that I get from it, because I feel like it's back to when I started going to the theatre when I was 14 and I found my love of it. Now I'm doing something that I think new people are coming to theatre to see. I love watching how the fans of the show have taken it on board and really run with it! And they're a really incredible bunch- they brilliantly go by the name the Mincefluencers.

Yes, I understand that they are a very devoted fanbase.

They are an incredible bunch of people who follow this show and do their own missions. They did one last week where they all sang outside the theater, which was incredible! It was so loud that we had to stop tech notes because we were just drowned out. It was an incredible Broadway moment for us. 

Because of my journey to the show, I do have more of a sort of care towards what they think. I still remember the first preview in London, because I sat there and thought, "What if I've ruined this? What if I have got this wrong?"  And within... 30 minutes, my shoulders had dropped. I was just watching the joy on their faces. And I still feel that with it. The show has grown a little bit more from the West End to Broadway, and watching them experience it, the joy of it for the first time again... I mean, that just makes it all worthwhile for me. 

Operation Mincemeat is running through July 13, 2025 at the Golden Theatre. View the full 2025 Spring Preview!