Source : Perth Now news
It was a deception plot so bizarre it could have easily read straight out of a Hollywood movie script.
Find a dead body, dress it up as a Royal Marine, forge papers detailing a non-existent plot to invade two nations, place those in a suitcase chained to the marine’s wrist and dump his body off the coast of Spain and hope it’s intercepted by German sympathisers and makes its way to Adolf Hitler.
And on top of that call it Operation Mincemeat.
Except it was true and not only did it help change the course of World War II in 1943 with Hitler moving his troops away from Sicily allowing the Allies to invade and hasten the fall of the fascist Italian government, it is credited with saving thousands of lives on both sides of the war.
British Intelligence officers Ewen Montagu and Charles Cholmondeley were behind the audacious deception but if Montagu had his way, it would have stayed a secret had it not been for a journalist threatening to expose it a decade later.
Montagu would spend just one weekend writing his memoir The Man Who Never Was in 1953.
“He was told to write it because they wanted an accurate version put out but that didn’t include any things that were still secret,” Ewen’s daughter Jennifer Montagu said.
“Things like they were able to decrypt all the German messages … they wanted a version put out there that had all the facts but not the facts they didn’t want known at that point,” the 95-year-old said.
While it spawned other books and a movie starring Colin Firth, it would also inspire four friends plying their trade on the comedy fringe circuit in the UK.
Friends Natasha Hodgson, Zoe Roberts, David Cumming and Felix Hagan formed SpitLip in 2017 wanting to combine their love of comedy and musicals.
“We had been making silly shows together,” Hodgson said.
“We wanted to try to make a huge, fantastic musical and we really wanted it to be based on a true story. We wanted it to be a story that we really believed in, that came from truth and that was a real story,” she said.
And that is where Operation Mincemeat was born.
“We loved that it was a small gang … we were a small gang, they were a small gang,” Hodgson said.
Operation Mincemeat actor Chloe Hart on the audience’s reaction to her playing the role of male characters in the hit musical comedy.
“I think almost subconsciously this gang was so strange, and they were all different … having these ‘poshytonian’ boys, these plucky underdog secretaries, a crazy coroner who wants to showcase dead bodies, an American pilot jumping in from nowhere … it fizzed for us so instantly.
“But also they were working towards a common goal of something bigger than themselves. It’s the best, most amazing version of what a small team can do. It’s still staggering to us,” she said.
What makes Operation Mincemeat even more remarkable is the fact just five performers play a combined 86 characters, with genders interchanged.
“The idea is it melts away and that actually you just start seeing bodies on stage,” Cumming said.
“And by the time you’ve seen the end of the show, you’ve seen technically 86 different characters – so all those bodies have played every possible thing you can and it stops being about gender and actually it melts into the background.
“It sort of makes it irrelevant, which is kind of the hope in the end,” he said.
Chloe Hart, who plays the roles of Johnny Bevan who signed off on the deception plan and intelligence officer Ian Fleming (who would go on to write the James Bond books), said she relishes the opportunity of playing male roles.
“My favourite thing is when I look up into the audience and sometimes I can see men being really intimidated by a woman playing a really strong man,” Hart said.
“And I love that. I absolutely love it”.
“It’s incredibly freeing not having to look glamorous … being able to just put on a suit and go up and be ‘I don’t have to stand up straight, I don’t have to look all cutesy and glamorous’, I can just be whatever I want to be.
“That feels really freeing,” she said.
The show made is West End debut in 2023 picking up six prestigious Laurence Olivier Awards nominations in 2024, where it took home Best New Musical and Best Actor in a Supporting Role in a Musical to Jak Malone.
Operation mincemeat made its Broadway debut in New York earlier this year with Malone taking home a Tony Award.
“I’m very proud and slightly astonished,” Ms Montagu said of the musical honouring her father’s work.
“It’s just crazy. It’s bonkers, really.”
Its showing in Australia is even more special for the Montagu family given Euan spent time here post his service.
“I think he would just be amazed how it’s spreading around the world,” she said.
Operation Mincemeat will make its Australian premiere at Melbourne’s Comedy Theatre in September 2027 with further cities to be announced.
The waitlist is now open at operationmincemeat.com/tour/aus
