In ‘Operation Mincemeat,’ the Crack Timing Required to Put on a Show
“Operation Mincemeat,” a Tony Award nominee for best musical, tells the absurdly improbable true story of how a tiny group of misfits in British intelligence diverted the German army in World War II. It’s a comic tale of a plan always on the verge of falling apart, and that’s how it is represented theatrically.“The show works at the knife edge of what we’re capable of,” said David Cumming, a member of SpitLip, the British theater collective that performs — and wrote and composed — the musical. “It’s the energy of ‘They’re barely pulling this off,’ and to be honest, we barely are.”Just as the story is hard to believe — a corpse planted with plans for a fictitious Allied invasion of Sardinia threw the Germans off the actual attack on Sicily? — so is the idea that a mere cast of five can tell it, shuffling through a total of 82 characters often across gender and mostly at the speed of farce. Like the military operation it portrays, the theatrical one requires elaborate planning.Natasha Hodgson, left, and Jak Malone wait for their next entrances. For this reason, “Operation Mincemeat,” which was a hit on the West End before opening on Broadway in March, is one of the most tightly choreographed shows imaginable. The performers are in nearly constant motion onstage — acting, singing, dancing, changing costumes and characters, tossing and catching props and rolling pieces of the set around, all in exact coordination with one another, the lighting and the music.The choreography behind the scenes is equally involved and precise, as I learned when I visited backstage at the Golden Theater during a recent matinee. There was no safe place to stand and watch. My attentive chaperone — Beau Lettieri, the assistant stage manager — had to keep me moving to stay out of the way.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More
