OPERATION MINCEMEAT ★★★★★

Southwark Playhouse until February 19 southwarkplayhouse.co.uk

Madcap and utterly marvellous, this uproarious musical from the Spitlip team is as bonkers as the true-life story it tells.

In 1943, a daring British plan saw the body of a fake drowned officer planted on Spanish shores, carrying fabricated plans for invading Sardinia. It persuaded Hitler to move troops out of Sicily, paving the way for the Allied invasion.

Against minimal sets, an extraordinary cast of just two men and three women merrily whirl between characters (and genders), often mid-song, from pompous ministry chaps (including Bond author Ian Fleming) and plucky secretaries to submarine sailors, show girls, sequin-clad undertakers and dancing Nazis.

Like the feverish, fast-talking, wisecracking love child of Mel Brooks, Monty Python and Lin-manuel Miranda, it blends every musical genre and delivers a dazzling array of pastiche treats and belly laughs, backed by an excellent live band.

If it was just a jolly farce about class, gender and pluckily defeating the Hun, it would be a hoot. But it suddenly, unexpectedly, becomes something more when (young and male) Jak Malone, as unassuming spinster Hester Leggett, quietly sings of a love lost to the previous war. Amid all the hilarity, the theatre fell completely silent, and I wept.

A deeply moving coda also pays poignant tribute to dead homeless man Glyndwr Michael, whose body was used for the drowned officer. This taut and tiny production roars in the face of bloated West End blockbusters. An absolute triumph.