Review Roundup: OPERATION MINCEMEAT Opens On Broadway

Operation Mincemeat: A New Musical opens on Broadway tonight! The new musical smash tells the wildly improbable and hilarious true story of the covert operation that turned the tide of WWII. Read the reviews!

Starring in Operation Mincemeat are David Cumming, Claire-Marie Hall, Natasha Hodgson, Olivier Award-winner Jak Malone and Zoë Roberts, who are reprising their original, acclaimed performances for the musical’s Broadway (American) premiere. Brandon Contreras, Sam Hartley, Jessi Kirtley, Gerianne Pérez and Amanda Jill Robinson round out the cast as understudies.

In Operation Mincemeat, it’s 1943, and the Allied Forces are on the ropes. Luckily, they’ve got a trick up their sleeve. Well, not up their sleeve, per se, but rather inside the pocket of a stolen corpse.

Jesse Green, The New York Times: I enjoyed ‘Operation Mincemeat’ well enough, but I would have enjoyed it much more if I thought that were true onstage.

Charles Isherwood, The Wall Street Journal: But the limited run has been extended more than once, and the surprise sensation of the Broadway season has been the unabashedly silly ‘Oh, Mary!,’ which also lampoons history, albeit more cavalierly. Audiences are always receptive to flights into jubilant escapism—perhaps particularly now—and this plucky musical provides it in generous doses.

Sara Holdren, Vulture: Operation Mincemeat isn’t exactly blazingly clever—the jokes fly thick and fast, and they tend toward broad grin-crackers rather than breathless zingers—but it overflows with good humor and heartfelt commitment… While some moments certainly sizzle more than others, there’s more than enough sincerity and goofy charisma on stage to keep the show powered.

Frank Rizzo, Variety: Though the main characters are played for laughs, each one, amid all the comic chaos, also reveals their own dignity, heart, and humanity. The show also manages to teeter between patriotism and subversiveness: admiring the derring-do of the mission while poking at its shortcomings, too. Having the actors play any gender of any character without camp or winks is a theatrical approach that not only cleverly skirts the sexist and classist ick of that era but coolly comments on it, too.

Johnny Oleksinki, The New York Post: The madcap World War II comedy from London, which opened Thursday night at the Golden Theatre, is an often tiring wallop of frenetic hyperactivity. There’s ample cleverness and some witty lines, but the Red Bull tweeness gets grating.

Adam Feldman, Time Out New York: What I do know is that the performer who comes across best is the one who seems the least forced: Jak Malone, who not only provides the show’s best mincing—as a campy fraudulent coroner bedecked in sequined blood—but also, by far, its meatiest dramatic moment: the Act I ballad ‘Dear Bill,’ in which Hester imagines a letter to the fictitious downed airman from his fictitious sweetheart, and which rings truer in feeling than anything else in the show.

David Finkle, New York Stage Review: As they bound along, the five performers have ingrained their work so well they could amusingly pass for figures on a Swiss clock. Their ensemble presentation is like nothing—or very few things—seen on a local stage before. It’s a major reason, though hardly the only of abundant reasons, to make Operation Mincemeat gleeful obligatory viewing.

Michael Sommers, New York Stage Review: Extended silliness such as this musical escapade needs to be grounded in a few quiet minutes of genuine emotion, and ironically this moment occurs in Operation Mincemeat when a fake identity for the corpse is being forged. As an item to pack into the guy’s wallet, the starchy spinster Hannah volunteers to produce a letter from his girlfriend, which develops into the tender ballad 'Dear Bill.' As Hannah writes ever more intimate domestic details, it becomes clear she is addressing her own sweetheart who did not return from the Great War. Jak Malone’s simple, oh-so-touching rendition likely nabs him awards later this spring.

David Cote, Observer: Operation Mincemeat is totally lovable and expertly zany, with Big Let’s Put on a Show Energy. See it now before SpitLip’s visas are revoked and they get thrown in Guantánamo.

Caroline Cao, New York Theatre Guide: Operation Mincemeat is a cup of British comedy, sometimes with drawn-out humor to a fault — not for every American. But it also captures the Hollywood hagiographic, the self-deprecating, the ironic, and the tragic that will make you gasp.

Chris Jones, The New York Daily News: While it’s a retro wartime story, the overall sensibility here is both contemporary and self-aware, filled with sly critiques of the domination of wartime intelligence services by members of the British ruling class, exerting their sexist ways. For the most part, the show is composed of zany humor that bleeds into comic songs with witty internal rhymes (the songs of Tim Minchin are a helpful comparative).

Andrew Martini, Theatrely: There’s a real, beating heart at the center of the show that elevates it above mere farce. Beneath the spoofs and gags, there’s an emotional depth that makes the comedy funnier and the satire sharper. While skewering the stuffy, educated British elite, SpitLip has done its due diligence by making room among the jokes to pay homage to the real man whose body was used as a pawn in a military operation.

Shania Russell, Entertainment Weekly: And therein lies the magic of the show. Mincemeat is so flippantly funny — with its premise alone it asks us to laugh off the rise of facism — that you expect the laughter to never die out. But it's secretly full of heart, and unafraid to slam us back in our seats with an emotional wallop.

Thom Geier, Culture Sauce: Malone, the lone cast member who isn’t credited as a co-author, is the real breakout here — and he’s blessed with the show’s best song, “Dear Bill,” a bittersweet love letter from the fiancée of the fake soldier that’s meant to be found on his person when he washes ashore, to lend an added verisimilitude to the plan. The tune works on that level magnificently, but it also taps into universal feelings of anxiety during wartime, the fears of soldiers as well as the loved ones back on the homefront.

Brian Scott Lipton, Cititour: Still, one’s viewing pleasure derives largely from the show’s superb five-person cast (three of whom are also its co-creators), whose ability to do quick costume changes and switch genders and characters on a dime – as well as handle the many challenges of Felix Hagan’s accomplished pastiche score -- are truly medal-worthy.

PJ Grisar, Forward: With jazzy ear-worms and a poignant showstopper in which MI5 secretary Hester Legatt (Jak Malone) dictates a letter to the agency’s fictive serviceman, Mincemeat is supremely entertaining. The ensemble is indefatigable, the stagecraft is inventive and the slapstick sublime. One can see why it has a fanatical following across the pond.

Jonathan Mandell, New York Theater: At one point, Malone as the older secretary Hester Leggett sings “Dear Bill,” a sweet ballad in which she’s trying to create a fictional love letter to the fictional dead officer to lend his existence more credibility. It becomes clear she is really thinking about her own love, lost in the war. In a show that works so hard to be entertaining, it’s the song that brings the story home.

Robert Hofler, The Wrap: Robert Hastie provides the frenzied “Mincemeat” direction. It forced someone behind me to whisper halfway through Act 1, “This is exhausting.” Nothing kills a laugh faster than seeing actors sweat.

Average Rating: 77.8%