Interview: 'It's Like a Mad Pandora's Box' Natasha Hodgson on the Power of Montagu, Learning from the Audience and Joy in OPERATION MINCEMEAT

Operation Mincemeat: “The Little Show That Could.”

From being commissioned at the New Diorama Theatre in 2019 the show has quickly become a hit on the West End, extending its run at the Fortune Theatre through February 2024 and gaining an incredible and passionate fanbase known as #Mincefluencers.

The show, created by the writing team Spitlip (David Cumming, Natasha Hodgson, Zöe Roberts and Felix Hagan), follows the true life story of Operation Mincemeat, in which MI5 successfully fooled the Nazis with false invasion plans and a dead body.

Hodgson plays the leader of the operation, the charming yet egotistical Ewen Montagu, wrapping the audience around her finger from the minute the curtain rises with a cocky attitude and growling voice.

BroadwayWorld had the chance to speak with Hodgson about what is has been like to work on Operation Mincemeat over the past few years and the show’s incredible journey to the West End. We also talked about the #Mincefluencer fanbase, some changes the show has gone through, being able to afford a cup of tea and what role Hodgson would play if she wasn’t playing the iconic Montagu!

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So what has it been like seeing Operation Mincemeat grow over the past few years?

It's been absolutely crazy. It's been so unbelievable to watch all the different things that have happened to the show, but at the same time, this is what we've worked towards. So it's a really bizarre cognitive dissonance. We always hoped that this is the route that the show would go. We would joke about it when we had no money for cups of tea and be like, “Well, don't worry, when we're on the West End, we'll afford cups of tea!”

It’s incredible! It's been absolutely wild, and also incredibly tiring. Anyone who works in theatre knows just how hard it is to do any iteration of any show and how much of your soul, your heart, and your body you have to put in just to keep it alive and make it sing. Because it's been so much of the same people through each version, that has really kept us feeling like it really is just the same gang, just the hats are getting slowly nicer and we can afford cups of tea now!

So it's been amazing. But at the same time, a military operation of our own dream. We just want to make this show as good as we can. It's been really helpful because all along, we’ve just wanted it to be good. When we started making it, it was okay. [Laughs] Each iteration has been like, “Well, that piece is now fixed, but this other thing now doesn't really work and this plotline isn't really . . . ” And so to have that hunger and focus at all times helps you drown out everything else. As writers and creators, you're so focused on trying to scratch that itch. It feels really lovely to finally be in a place we can breathe and be like, “Nothing else is itchy!” It's like putting cream on the itch, the disgusting metaphor for what it feels like to finally complete the show. 

The past few weeks have been a bit crazy with #OperationInterestingMan and Reece Shearsmith!

It's been absolutely mad! What's become more apparent with the show is that what people really see in it is the fact that it's just weirdos really wanting to make stuff for each other. We want to make each other laugh, we want the show to be as good as it can be. What's evidence is the amazing creative community around the show, they go, “Me! I also play! That is what I do too!” We all just want to make things that make our friends laugh and I think that's the seed of #OperationInterestingMan. These people who are also creative and love making have found each other and also want to make us laugh! And they want to surprise us and turn up in these amazing Spilsbury costumes! I feel like what we've done is just built a huge in-joke that we want more and more people to be in on. 

So we had the Q&A with Reece, who is truly my all-time hero. I think everything that he has done in his career in terms of making stuff for his friends and doing interesting things with gender really, really early on, it all came from being inspired by him and his team, that work. We had a drink with him afterwards and I was asking him, “You've been in it for so long and everything you make is so interesting and different, how do you keep any sort of demons away?” And he was just like, “It's exactly the same thing as when we start, which is just you make it for yourself. You make it for the people that you are like, ‘You're cool, we make each other laugh.’ Just keep that stone rolling throughout because nothing else is really real.”

What you want is it to be a job that can sustain you and that you can pay the bills with, that's the dream. It's amazing that we can now pay the bills with this musical that we've made, but none of it would be interesting if it wasn't that ball rolling like, “Oh, but this could be stupid! Put that in!” And “Oh my god, what if I did this line? Would that make Zoe laugh? Would that make me laugh?” And “If Jak said that, that would be really funny!” It's really nice to hear from someone who is a towering genius of this form to just be like, “You just gotta make your friends laugh.” And I think it's all the same pot really, it's the same with the community. That's why we like to be alive, it’s just to find people who we love and go, “Me too! Also I play!” [Laughs]

What has it been like playing such an extravagant character like Montagu?

It's really funny! Before this show, I didn't play any characters like this. I was in shows with Dave and Bob, we've always made our own shows, but I tended to play the more Charles type of character because I've got long spidery arms and weird limbs, and I’m kind of gangly. And so I would play those sorts of characters. And then just because of the jigsaw of the cast when we put them together, it just made more sense for me to play Montagu. But I get it now. I get why rich white men want to keep hold of the power because it is undeniably hypnotic! 

There's something about, even just in a play sense, being a character who strides into a room and just believes that he can own it. And in the belief of it, it becomes true. And that's the sort of magic that I want to take away from that character. And I hope that even if you don't like Montagu, or you don't like the character, I think what we're trying to put across in a positive light, as well as all this critique, is everyone should be more like Montagu. Everyone should have faith in their abilities and in their own integrity and see it through. There are many things about Montagu that you shouldn't do, as evidenced by what happens in the show! But it's very stimulating and engaging to roar into the show with an energy of, “This is going to be the best day ever. And I'm going to prove it to you!” And then bring people along. That's what I love about the character.

And getting to know the actual Montagu family, I think they are really appreciative of it, and they love the show! That's really nice for lots of reasons. I think they too like the idea of a main character who brings people along with him. He is obviously a huge ego, but part of his ego is about the excitement of a plan working. There are flaws that come on top of that. When he believes he's right, he believes he’s right, even if he's incredibly wrong, and that's the opposite side of that coin. But you can't play a character like Montagu purely with critique in mind. You can't give it life if you're playing a caricature. It's a disrespect to the story and to the history to try and play it that way.

What is it like telling a story based on historical fact?

It's amazing. It's the first adaptation of a historical story we’ve done. And in some ways, it's obviously restricting, because you have to have to stick to the things that happened. But I think because it was the first musical we’d written, there were things we had to do that we'd never considered before like arranging and proper choreography. We didn't have a director for the first few iterations of it! And so being like, “This the story, this is what happened.” You can’t say, “What if one of them turns into a dinosaur?”

That's always the next show, there's always the next project. I think the first thing that's good about it was it was very centering in terms of constructing a narrative like, “That's the plot. We can mess with it a bit, but that's what it is.” The second layer is that we come from a comedy background, we are comedy writers. We're very comfortable writing a bunch of jokes. The first version of the show, the New Diorama, was much more gag-heavy, because we were just throwing endless stupid jokes out. But the more that we got to know the story and were more comfortable with it, the more that we realised that it was our duty to to pay a proper homage and due respect to both the story and also the wider context of the war.

We all know World War II, it's a huge part of our history. And although we didn't want to glorify it in the way that our school system seems obsessed with doing, we didn't want to come in cynically or making it feel like we didn't care, that we're above it in some way. So having these real figures in the background of everything, these people lived! They existed! This all happened! We can't just throw a load of hats on . . . I mean, we do that anyway. [Laughs]

Like the #FindHester campaign, watching that unfold was incredible!

Oh my God, exactly! It’s just amazing that that's happened and that they’ve actually found her! One of the special things for me is the show has attracted this type of person, these curious, funny, active people who not only go to see something like, “Okay, well, so what else? Let's go!” They don't just sit back and go, “Great. What are we going to do for ice cream?” They probably do that. Ice cream is great! No harm, no foul there. But the idea that we could be any part of somebody's soul or brain lighting up and being like, “Okay, but what if we just did a little bit more? What if we worked on this?” Because that's the core of everything. We could have gotten proper jobs. My mum would have been delighted if I'd been a lawyer! A proper path that is slightly more structured and slightly less a gaping void. But to create something that passes on that little spark of fire to go, ”I just want to go off and do my own thing, I want to find out more about this,” and to bring those people together, it's a real honour and a joy.

And it's very important to remember when you're putting your shoes on. We've done it so many times now! It's so easy to forget, because you get into such a rhythm. It's easy to lose sight of the big picture because you have to be so focused on every single moment. You want to deliver a great show every time, you want to be the best every time, which is its own terrible curse. You have to be so in it every single second. But in order to really enjoy and appreciate it, you also have to zoom out and see it for what it's doing. And I think that's where the fans and the community stuff is so helpful, keeping us engaged and keeping us going, because they are, at every moment, trumpeting the wider picture and what it means to them and what has sprung off from it. It's so much bigger than anything that we've made now, which is just really lovely. 

How do you think that you've developed as an artist through the years of developing Operation Mincemeat?

I think I'm much less afraid of being emotionally vulnerable in my work now, in a way that we all probably were a bit afraid of when we started this. And not to give the pandemic credit, but when we were writing the show, we were focused on getting the songs in order, getting the jokes out, getting any sort of semblance of a first draft. And then we were forced to have this awful, life-destroying pause with the horrible perspective of, “What are we doing? What is theatre doing?” So we went through the same things of, “What is this for? How can we help? Can we do anything?” We tried very much to pour that into the show and to open ourselves up a little bit more to put those reflections in. It's hard, because when you're writing collaboratively, you can't just be like, “I will put my soul on paper, and I'll put it in front of an audience and we'll see what happens.” You have to give it to your collaborators and they also have to agree. You have to have that tussle internally before you even get it to an audience.

So I think there's a double vulnerability of being open with these people that I've known and loved for many years, but I have never had to be like, “I think we should do a song about how we need to be useful because we're all going absolutely mad.” But it was really freeing. And I think you can see that on stage. You know when you're watching something that feels true versus something that an artist would like you to believe is true, or is trying to make you feel something. Me trying to make someone feel something is not the same as trying to explain how something makes you feel. One comes from a place of cynicism, one comes from a place of both fear and hope at the same time. Being able to follow those instincts versus trying to be like, “What will make them laugh?” That's vulnerable too! When a joke doesn't land, there's no worse feeling in the world than that. But that at least, we've all been very used to flexing those muscles, whereas trying to make people feel deeper things was a new avenue for us. And that's what I hope we’ll take into whatever we make next. 

Do you have any scene or moment that you're most proud of in Operation Mincemeat?

I don't think there's a moment that I'm particularly prouder of than the others because it's such a weird knit. I'm really proud of the flowing of emotions that we've managed to create in a relatively short amount of time. I think that's because of endless trial and error, of being like, “If we put this moment next to this moment, what happens?” The very first iteration, we decided “We'll finish “Dear Bill,” and Bevan will storm in, and that will be how “Dear Bill” ends.” We did it once and the whole audience was like, “What are you doing?!” They were so viscerally furious that we had crushed this moment, and we were like, “Well, that's obviously wrong. Thank you for that feedback, let’s never ever do that again!” And so you learn and you do something else.

For someone seeing it for the first time, the show is this fluid thing that dances around. I look at the show and I see a creature that's covered in battle scars but is strong for it. Every transition, every song, every lyric, every line has been put out in a gauntlet and run again and again, hundreds and hundreds of times, to the point where it's built into this machine. I'm very proud of the creature that it is now and hopefully it comes across as a joyful creature, which it is, but it is very hard-won and I'm proud that we've battled long enough to win it.

What is your favourite line from the show?

It's really hard not to go with, “Why did we meet in the middle of a war? / What a silly thing for anyone to do,” but I think that's almost cheating because we just nicked that from the actual letter. But every time that Jak sings it, I feel incredibly proud to have protected it like a little butterfly that flies into the show! But I also do love “For Fortune favours bravery / And a fortune’s what I've got.” It’s a really good joke! I didn't write it so I can say it's a good joke. 

Did that line come in when you moved into the Fortune Theatre?

No, no, that was already from the first iteration of that song. Maybe the second iteration because we opened the show with a song called “Special Boy.” “Born to Lead” was actually originally a duet between Charles and Montagu in the middle of the first half. That’s what I'm talking about! The binding of the flesh! I think it was Felix who wrote that actually, he was worried about that! Because I was like, “That’s such a good line! It’s got to go to the end of a phrase.” And he was like “No, it can go second to last.” Every moment for me in the shoulder echoes that. There were like 60 conversations about every line. So it's impossible to see it as the thing that it is, but I do always love shouting, “A fortune’s what I’ve got!” On a West End stage, dressed as a rich, ex-public school man.

Who is the character you would want to play if you weren't playing Monty?

I wish I could play Haselden, because he's the closest to the goons that I would used to play. But Zoë is just a genius. And the fact that she can go from Bevan to Haselden back and forth when they’re important energies to get right for so many things in the mad fabric of this show. Every night, she never gets it wrong. I get it wrong all the time! I float through, I forget stuff, I bash my way through it. 

True Monty style, right?

Yeah, that's the thing! You don't want to say it, but there is definitely shades of characters within ourselves. We've written them, we've grown them, and we put ourselves in there. So I think there is definitely a mutant Montagu that resides within me. But every time I watch her do Haselden, because it's the second act, the audience wants something new and then what they get is this mad bumbling man in Havana. She carries the comedy of the second act with that character. It's so funny! And I would love to have a chance to see if I could do it. I don't know if I could, but I'd love to be able to give it a go!

Favourite costume or prop?

Probably my Union Jack jacket. The audacity of it! It’s just so disgusting, that sparkly Union Jack. It's so awful, so audacious, and just everything that's wrong with ridiculous “Old World Britain,” but it is so much fun to do. That moment for me at the top of the staircase, to see the audience being like, “I can't believe they've done this!” I'm putting it on backstage, I’m about to climb up my little weird ladder, and then we're gonna come out and then we're gonna fly. The whole sequence is such a mad indulgent joy. 

How would you describe the show in one word?

I hope it would be “joyful” because we've put all of our joy into it. We just want people to get joy out of it. It's so hard now. You get bombarded every minute with horrendous truth and horrendous untruth from every possible outlet. All we wanted to do with this show was pour all of our love, our love for each other, our love for our friendship and our comedy heroes, and for the live experience of going to see something.

We went to see Ride, the musical, recently, and I just came out feeling like, “I’m so glad about theatre! I’m so glad it exists!” And you do forget it. When you come to work every day, you do it every day, you forget about that feeling of the possibility and the inventiveness of stuff when you watch a little thing that has so much within it. It's like a mad Pandora's box of all the stuff that we wanted to show to each other and to show to the audiences, to go, “Imagine this if this can happen.” By “this” I mean the mission, the production, and everything else! If this can happen it’s limitless.

Operation Mincemeat runs at the Fortune Theatre with tickets available until 21 April 2024. 

Photo Credits: Matt Crockett

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