OPERATION MINCEMEAT ★★★★★
Fortune Theatre until August 19 Tickets: 03330 096 690
In 1943, MI5 boffins dreamt up a macabre scheme to misdirect the Nazis towards Sardinia, allowing British troops to take back Sicily. All they needed was a dead body dressed as a pilot with a briefcase of fake documents attached to its wrist.
Both the eccentric plan and this eccentric musical succeed against all odds. Following its premiere last year, this revival has a slightly bigger budget that allows for an OTT finale, but otherwise it remains true to its original concept.
A cast of five – three women and two men – play a variety of roles including public school spies, Cockney geezers, lovelorn spinsters and goosestepping Nazis.
Written, composed and performed by the original four members – David Cumming, Felix Hagan (orchestrations only), Natasha Hodgson and Zoe Roberts, augmented by Claire Marie-Hall and Jak Malone – it is an accelerated cartoon stuffed with absurdly brilliant songs. Rhyming “stagnating” with “pupating” or “Sardinia” with “killin’ ya” displays a near-Byronic fondness for verbal mischief.
The cast switch characters in a heartbeat by pulling on hats and coats, and switch moods from hilarity to poignancy almost as quickly. Delivered with a style that borders on the surreal while remaining grounded in reality, it is played with pinpoint precision and a wholehearted embrace of theatricality.
Following the roars of approval that greet the deliriously funny Nazi R&B rap number Das Übermensch, Roberts turns to the audience with a smirk – “Oh, really? Whose side are you on?”
Compared with the lumbering, overproduced and lazily conceived jukebox musicals cluttering up the West End, this is a cluster bomb of creativity that raises the game. Unmissable.