Operation Mincemeat Broadway Reviews

I enjoyed ‘Operation Mincemeat’ well enough, but I would have enjoyed it much more if I thought that were true onstage.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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).

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 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.