skygiants | (no subject)

The other piece of theater we saw on vacation was Operation Mincemeat, which both

genarti and I had both sort of assumed would be a kind of musical shitpost until multiple different friends individually and independently recommended it to us. We had been planning to see it when we thought it was a musical shitpost anyway and were sort of bemused to learn that it was apparently so good that everyone we knew had already seen it twice, but now, having seen it, I have to agree: I would also see it twice!

For those unfamiliar, Operation Mincemeat recounts a legendary WWII spyjink in which the British floated a corpse loaded with fake secret documents to convince Nazi Germany to move their troops off of Sicily. The leader of the project, Ewen Montagu, then wrote a book which was made into a movie in the fifties starring Clifton Webb as a noble and patriotic Ewen Montagu, and then Ben Macintyre of spy nonfiction fame wrote another book which was made into another movie starring Colin Firth as a handsome and tormented Ewen Montagu.

Operation Mincemeat is coming in with a hot take, which on a broad scale is that that wealthy and charismatic upper-class officers who write narratives about heir own heroics are probably taking credit for a lot of work put in by other people, and on the more immediate scale is that Ewen Montagu -- introduced with a scathing song titled "Born to Lead -- ain't shit. This is perhaps a little unfair to the real Ewen Montagu but on the other hand Ewen Montagu has already been played heroically, as aforementioned, by Clifton Webb and Colin Firth, so I think he'll survive [metaphorically speaking, as Beth reading over my shoulder points out that he died in 1985.]

And, I mean, in the Operation Mincemeat musical he's being played by a hot actress in period menswear projecting "charismatic asshole" for all she's worth, which is honestly not so bad for Ewen either. It's a five-person cast and everyone is slipping in between their major role and a number of background roles. The two main-character secretaries -- quiet middle-aged professional Hester and ambitious young Jean -- are played respectively by an actor and an actress who are both wearing the same default trousers and suspenders, Hester's actor in specific really doing all the work to convey her character with body language and vocal intonation alone. The cross-casting could come across as cheap comedy but never does, partly because Hester's character is taken by far the most seriously by the show as a whole, and partly because of the way the whole cast is constantly switching between roles -- sometimes they're all sailors, sometimes they're all secretaries -- in a way that not only means the whole cast is constantly putting gender on and off with their costume pieces but also just allows for some exceptionally cool tricks of stagecraft. I really loved the Act I finale, which uses lighting changes to evoke the effect of 'cross-cutting' between a couple of our main characters partying in a club and a group of sailors solemnly releasing the dead body into the ocean: at one point I found myself thinking 'how are they getting everyone on and off-stage so quickly?' before I remembered that the whole cast were just five people switching between being sailors and being London partygoers very very fast.

There are definitely bits of the show that didn't work for me (the Comical Nazis Musical Number felt pretty extraneous) and most of the actual music is fun but not necessarily anything I'd listen to or that stands on its own outside its context, with the one exception being Hester's song Dear Bill (note: although I am linking this, I am also relaying on

genarti's firm opinion that she preferred not to have heard it beforehand.) Also as we left the theater a very indignant young man in front of us was complaining to his companion about the show's appalling erasure of the role of the Soviet Union in WWII, which I do think is a pretty funny take about a satirical British musical comedy about MI5 but, like, I can't argue!

But, overall, I really liked it -- first, for its genuine interest and attention to unseen and invisible work; second for just how much it loves to show off what it can do just with the power of stagecraft and acting. Absolutely unfilmable theater! We love to see it! If it comes to Broadway (as I think it may well, we received a very funny survey For Americans asking hopefully if As An American we could follow the plot and the accents etc.) we too will probably be seeing it again!

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

oracne

This sounds great! I saw the Netflix movie but had not heard of the musical!

From:

(no subject)

Page Summary

Active Entries

Style Credit

Expand Cut Tags