Operation Mincemeat at New Diorama Theatre
Brilliant. Just brilliant. This utterly indescribable new musical, Operation Mincemeat, is an absolute must-see.
As if the members of SpitLip weren’t content with being award-winning comedians and having a successful (and damn good) glam-punk band, they felt the need to make a comedy musical. About corpses.
This is one of the more totally ridiculous and totally brilliant true stories of World War II, about how a washed-up corpse fooled Hitler. And this insane underlying narrative forms the most serious element of Operation Mincemeat, a show so full of absurd flamingo-maggot-public-school-boy-high-stakes-Nazi-James-Bond nonsense that audiences may suffer from PTSD. In a good way.
There simply isn’t enough space on this website, let alone this one page, to talk in-depth about everything that the production absolutely smashes. So let’s get a few things out of the way quickly. Set? Sweet. Lighting? Wicked. Costumes? Yes. Choreography? Brill.
Now for the writing. Oh God, the writing! The hilarity, the peculiarity, the downright stupidity. It’s better than sex. It’s super clever stuff, wrapped up in stupendous silliness. From lusciously mocking the privileged English public school boy to the odd heartfelt blow.
The music and songs don’t disappoint either. Musical director Felix Hagan has a lot to answer for. The absolute best musicals achieve a strong desire to go away and listen to the songs over and over and over. And over. And the songs in this show will no doubt leave everyone pining for them for months.
And of course, those numbers would be nothing without the phenomenal cast to sing them. David Cumming, Natasha Hodgson, Rory Furey-King, Jak Malone and Zoe Roberts all deserve a medal for their performances. One of this lot alone would be a rare find but to have five of them in one show is simply unfair on other productions.
Operation Mincemeat is comedically genius and musically masterful. Ok, one or two jokes don’t land as well as they could and maybe the odd melody feels off. The production isn’t actually perfect. In fact, it’s probably as imperfect as a five-star show can be – perfect enough that to give it four stars would be a sin. It would also be a sin not to go see it. Hitler never saw this show and look what happened to him.
Jim Compton-Hall
Photo: Alex Harvey-Brown
Operation Mincemeat was at New Diorama Theatre from 14th May until 15th June 2019. For further information visit the theatre’s website here.
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