The audience at Broadway’s Golden Theater was merrily losing its mind. Onstage, actors were frenziedly passing round a briefcase and landline phones. As the zaniness increased, the laughter got louder. For the creators and cast of the musical Operation Mincemeat, these effusive reactions are not only welcome, but also a relief. The true story of a convoluted, life-saving Second World War plan to fool Hitler may be a West End hit, but, as with any British theatrical export, the question is: will Americans get it? The early audience answer for Mincemeat seems to be yes; New York critics’ verdicts will be revealed on the opening night, this week.
“We’re having an absolute blast,” says Natasha Hodgson, one of five performers — alongside David Cumming, Claire-Marie Hall, Jak Malone and Zoë Roberts — playing the real-life British military figures, and a dizzying array of other characters, who plotted to use a corpse to deceive the Nazis over the Allied invasion of Sicily in 1943.
