In 2022, I gave a very positive review to a movie called “Operation Mincemeat,” describing its basic plot — based on a true story — thusly:
It’s the story of a giant deception dreamed up in 1943 by British spies to fool Hitler into believing the Allies would mount an assault on the shores of Greece, although the actual plan was to land on the beaches of Sicily.
To fool the Nazis, English intelligence officers — including Ian Fleming, who later wrote the James Bond novels — devised a scheme using a briefcase full of phony official documents attached to a soldier’s corpse that the Royal Navy dropped in the water off Spain. Every choice along the way was scrutinized to the smallest details, including a photo of the dead man’s girlfriend and a love letter she had written him. The hope was that the body would drift ashore, be found by local fishermen, and be turned over to Spanish authorities who would share the information with German intelligence officers.
The whole thing sounds crazy, but the movie played it straight, with Colin Firth in the lead.
Two years after the movie debuted on Netflix, a comedy troupe called SpitLip took the story and turned it into a musical farce. It was a smash hit in London’s West End, and now they have brought it to Broadway, which is where I saw it last week. The cast of five play all the parts, changing costumes, accents, and voices with precision timing. They can all sing, too, especially Jak Malone, who won an Olivier Award for Best Supporting Actor.
What SpitLip created with “Operation Mincemeat” reminded me of the kind of silliness my friends in the Reduced Shakespeare Company have been writing and performing for over forty years on stage, TV, and radio (including guesting many times on my show — you can hear those segments here).
The show is hysterical, clever, and doesn’t overstay its welcome, with a run time of about 105 minutes. The Playbill lists over fifty producers, who must be thrilled the show is booked to play on Broadway through next February! It may then be picked up by regional theaters with different cast members, but if you’re going to be in New York in the next ten months, I strongly recommend getting tickets to “Operation Mincemeat.”
If you can’t do that, look for the movie on Netflix. It’s not as zany as the theatrical production, but it’s still an amazing story to see played out.