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Dead Men Do Tell (Funny) Tales: Operation Mincemeat
A genuinely funny musical about one of World War II’s oddest espionage gambits.
That a self-described “big, dumb musical” about a particularly wacko tidbit of World War II history, created by a scrappy British comedy troupe, is now making its debut on Broadway after rocketing through the strata of UK theater, selling out on the West End, and taking home two Olivier awards? At MI5, several intelligence officers—chiefly Ewan Montagu and Charles Cholmondeley (that’s pronounced “Chumly,” fellow Yanks)—cooked up a scheme they called Operation Mincemeat: Disguise a corpse as a British pilot, plant a briefcase full of misleading documents on it, and let it wash up on the coast of Spain, where German spies would be almost certain to get their hands on the bait. Here, it’s brainy Cholmondeley who thinks up the brilliant plan and cocksure Montagu who sells it to the top brass, with the indispensable support of Hester Leggatt, the not-to-be-trifled with head of all MI5’s secretaries (played with tart perspicacity and hidden wells of feeling by Jak Malone), and the gutsy “new girl” in the typing pool, Jean Leslie (Claire-Marie Hall).
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