Operation Mincemeat
“It takes a dead man to tell the truth about the old boys’ club.”
Fortune Theatre, London, UK
If you ever wondered what WWII espionage, cross-dressing MI5 agents, and razor-sharp feminist satire would look like rolled into one gloriously bonkers musical… welcome to Operation Mincemeat.
This show is a Trojan horse of feminist commentary, smuggled inside a screwball musical about one of history’s oddest real-life spy operations: a plot to convince the Nazis that the Allies planned to invade Greece (not Sicily) by planting false papers on a corpse. That premise alone is deliciously bizarre—but what SpitLip, the creative powerhouse behind this production, have done with it is nothing short of revolutionary.
Let’s start with the casting: the gender-swapped roles are no gimmick—they’re a scalpel. Natasha Hodgson plays Ewen Montagu, the swaggering, self-congratulating barrister-turned-spy, with all the bloated confidence of a man used to being praised for simply showing up. Watching a woman perform this male privilege so precisely forces us to see it more clearly—and more absurdly. Hodgson doesn’t just lampoon Montagu; she dissects him, scalpel in one hand, jazz hands in the other.
And then there’s Jak Malone as Hester Leggett. In one breath he’s high-camp coroner in a sequined bloody apron, in the next he’s channeling quiet heartbreak in “Dear Bill”—a tender, devastating ballad that anchors the entire show. His Hester is the secretary every war film forgets to mention: overlooked, undervalued, and holding the whole damn operation together. When he sings about the imaginary fiancée of their fictional officer, it’s a love letter to all the women whose real contributions were filed under “miscellaneous.”
Claire-Marie Hall’s Jean Leslie, the secretary drafted to be the face of the fake lover “Pam,” could so easily have been a decorative afterthought. Instead, she crackles with defiance. Her song “All the Ladies” is a feminist war cry wrapped in a swing beat, a dazzling reclamation of agency. You’ll laugh, you’ll tear up, you’ll want to burn the patriarchy.
Operation Mincemeat isn't just clever—though it is, blisteringly so. It’s disruptive in the best way. The musical gleefully skewers the wartime establishment—the old boys’ network, the military-industrial buffoonery, and yes, the classism so thick you could bayonet it. Yet it never feels didactic. Instead, it feels like being in on the world’s most subversive inside joke.
And the music? Think vaudeville-meets-Britpop-meets-Hamilton-meets-West-End-anarchy. There’s a whip-smart energy to the lyrics, and the harmonies snap with mischief. These are songs that sound like a history textbook set on fire—with choreography.
By the time the curtain drops, the absurdity of the premise has become the perfect vehicle for deeper truths: about who gets remembered, who gets erased, and who has to dress as a dead man just to be taken seriously.
Final Verdict:
Operation Mincemeat is a feminist Trojan horse dressed in khaki, lipstick, and fake dog tags. It’s hilarious, heart-wrenching, and subversively empowering. Go for the corpse. Stay for the revolution.
