Avalon production company in association with SpitLip
Storyhouse, Chester, May 4-9, 2026
(5 / 5)
What a story! The real life events of Operation Mincemeat are nothing short of remarkable, a MI5 plan in 1943 to divert Nazi forces from Sicily to Sardinia to enable an Allied invasion of Sicily to take place with little opposition. 90,000 soldiers were moved on the strength of phoney intelligence found in a briefcase of a downed RAF pilot who was ‘planted’ off the coast of Spain. However, would this translate to the stage, especially in the form of a musical? On the strength of the standing ovation, it certainly does.
The musical follows the events of Operation Mincemeat closely, MI5 agents vie for proposing a plan to fool the Nazi defences, an outlandish plan is accepted and then enacted. A local coroner alerted MI5 to a homeless man who had recently passed away whose body could be used to construct a false identity. A considerable backstory was invented for this phantom pilot including love letters and realistic documentation. The body is let go from a submarine in the Mediterranean and when it is washed up onshore, an autopsy is carried out and arrangements were made for the briefcase to fall into the hands of the Nazis.
The cast of five all take multiple roles in a fast moving production and work together excellently as a team. It was hard to pick out a stand out performer but Christian Andrews excelled as Hester Leggatt and others, a soft spoken more elderly secretary. Georgina Hagen as Ewen Montagu was brash and bullish, full of pluck. Sean Carey was a wonderfully bumbling Charles Cholmondeley who came up with the outrageous plan yet was too shy to promote it. Jamie-Rose Monk was forthright as Johnny Bevan, the overseer of the project and Katy Ellis was assured as the put upon Jean Leslie, a talented spy but who was often overlooked because she was a woman.
The set was very clever, illustrating an operations room for the most part but then by the use of strategic lighting transformed at one point into a plane. The choreography was slick and helped hold your attention and while the band was a small four piece unit, gave the feel of a wartime vibe.
There were issues raised by the production. The identity of the phoney pilot at times was dismissed as unimportant, a homeless man is a nobody apparently. However, measures were taken to find his identity and make sure that there was no surviving family who may be looking for him. Eventually his identity was recognised and the Commonwealth War Graves Commission added his name to go with the false identity of the pilot on the memorial in Spain. Montagu at one point was suspected of being a Soviet spy, passing documents to his brother who was a communist. This turned out to be a screenplay, but the prospect kept the plot boiling with intrigue.
It is hard to do justice in describing this musical. Despite being a complex story, it works wonderfully well and became a dazzling production, picking up on public school attitudes amongst the officers and communicating the story really well. It deserves to become a must see production for anyone with an interest in theatre, musicals or the history of world war 2.
(4 / 5)