THE OPERATION IS A SUCCESS By Peter Filichia
Fair warning: this column will appear to be something between a mild shill and a hard sell.
But, really, I know you’ll have a better time at OPERATION MINCEMEAT if you hear the cast album in advance.
The plain truth is that many of the songs that David Cumming, Natasha Hodgson and Zoe Roberts wrote and perform (as well as the ones that Felix Hagan contributed) don’t just go a mile-a-minute; they’re more in the 70-, 80- or 90-mph category.
Putting it another way, some of the songs are done so speedily that they make COMPANY’s “Getting Married Today” seem like “Ol’ Man River.” Thus, if you get a head start by knowing the infectious but rapid score, you’ll have a much more rewarding experience.
Back in 1941, Danny Kaye made his reputation for doing a lickety-split rendition of “Tschaikowsky” in LADY IN THE DARK. In far less than a minute, he rattled off the names of more than four dozen classical composers. Plenty have since performed the song as quickly or better (including Adolph Green on the 1963 studio cast album).
And yet, OPERATION MINCEMEAT suggests that each of those aforementioned cast members – as well as their compatriots Claire-Marie Hall and Jak Malone – could do the Ira Gershwin-Kurt Weill classic song in the fastest time yet.
Great casts always make it look easy. You may not infer that from a listen to the cast album, because you can’t see how hard they work. But work hard they do, playing many characters in a gender-bending cavalcade with double the usual amount of double-talk.
So, what exactly is OPERATION MINCEMEAT? Let’s put it this way. We’ve had musicals that have honored various genres: CURTAINS celebrated the murder mystery; CITY OF ANGELS homaged film noir; COMEDY, which shuttered in Boston without braving Broadway, musicalized that ol’ Italian 15th-century favorite, commedia dell’arte.
OPERATION MINCEMEAT is a musical version of a knockabout, door-slamming British farce – one in the style of BOEING-BOEING and LET’S GET LAID.
(The latter isn’t as salacious as it sounds. The authorities are trying to catch a criminal named Gordon Laid; hence, “Let’s get Laid!”)
As a result, OPERATION MINCEMEAT is broad where a farce should be broad, resulting in a wild success. Seldom has been heard a discouraging word from critics and audiences in the two solid years that it’s played London. Last May, in my scramble from broker to broker to get a single, I could do no better than a seat in the very last row of the balcony.
Now the hit is at the Golden where it will be golden for some time, considering how many extensions it’s already announced. Predicting that it will eventually celebrate a Golden anniversary in 2075 may be overly optimistic, but at the very least, don’t be surprised if OPERATION MINCEMEAT makes mincemeat of its competition at awards time.
(Is Broadway having another “British Invasion” as we did in the ’80s? If so, this second one is happening on a much smaller scale; MINCEMEAT has five characters and SIX, as you might expect, has but six. The current SUNSET BLVD., unlike the extraordinarily ornate original production, has so little scenery that all of it could fit in your car’s back seat and trunk without your needing to lay a glove on your glove compartment.)
“This is a true story,” we’re told before the show starts. You may find that hard to believe of this World War II tale. The British fear that the Nazis are planning to seize Sicily. So, the Naval Intelligence officers desperately seek a plan that will make the enemy think that the Allies are aiming to capture Sardinia. How can they get 100,000 German troops to change their plans and go there instead? If the good guys could get the bad guys to do that, Sicily would be free for the taking.
Among the many plans put forth is a most outrageous one. Find a dead body, get a briefcase, fill it with the bogus invasion plans, handcuff it to one of his hands, and throw him into the sea. What the Brits hope will happen is that the corpse will wash ashore and be found by the Nazis, who’ll of course open the briefcase, believe what they read, and send their boys to Sardinia.
“It’s insane, but it just might work,” says one of the officers, which could be said of the show, too. Perhaps this ridiculous would-be solution inspired the writers to match it with a purposely ridiculous approach. But, in a line often attributed to Carol Burnett, “Comedy is tragedy plus time.”
Also offered is the occasional anachronism. Sudoku, mentioned once, wouldn’t be conceived for 36 more years. Act Two starts with the Nazis doing rap, perhaps as a way to make us hate the Germans even more. It all culminates in a true putting-on-the-glitz finale.
There’s even some dramatic irony – that’s where the audience knows something the characters don’t – because one of the British team members is Ian Fleming. In 1943, he was a budding novelist who had some ideas for spy novels. When he told them to his colleagues, they let him know that he’d better keep his day job.
As hilarious as the show wants to be, it does take time out to make a point about that era’s women workers. A female character who helps immeasurably doesn’t get the credit she greatly deserves simply because she isn’t a man.
As for the score, it often mixes the sound of the ‘40s with contemporary pop. Each rapid-fire number received generous applause and yet… and yet… as much handclapping that I heard each funny song receive both in London and on Broadway, the one that garnered the most appreciative and generous response came from, of all things, a ballad.
One of the naval officers suggests that the briefcase contain a love letter, to humanize the dead body. After a few false starts in which none of the brass can come up with something effective, Hester, a secretary, spontaneously writes one based on her own experiences in losing a lover during World War I.
The result, “Dear Bill,” is so heartfelt that even the most hardhearted theatergoer would have to be moved by it. It may be the reason why Jak Malone was the only victor among the three cast members who were nominated for Olivier Awards. Malone may well be accepting one or two more trophies in the months to come.
“Dear Bill,” unlike the others, doesn’t require an advance listen to the cast album, for it goes at a more humane pace. Still, you may want to have the recording of OPERATION MINCEMEAT, so that you can hear “Dear Bill” over and over again and again – and again.
Peter Filichia can be heard most weeks of the year on www.broadwayradio.com. His calendar – A SHOW TUNE FOR TODAY: 366 Songs to Brighten Your Year – is now available on Amazon.
