The U.K.’s domestic counterintelligence agency, MI5, is having quite the pop-culture moment, though perhaps not a very desirable one.
It’s the subject of Slow Horses, the Apple TV hit (based on the best-selling Mick Herron novels) starring Gary Oldman as the ringmaster of a group of MI5 rejects who manage to expose the misdeeds of their betters and avert terrorist plots in between bouts of extreme ineptitude.
The agency endures a similar spotlight in Operation Mincemeat, the Tony-winning musical by David Cumming, Felix Hagan, Natasha Hodgson and Zoë Roberts with a North American Tour kicking off at Broadway in Chicago’s CIBC Theatre.
This antic production tells the story of a bizarre real-life British intelligence operation that helped turn the tide of World War II against the Nazis by floating a corpse onto the coast of Spain with a briefcase stuffed with fake plans for an invasion of Sardinia. After German spies lifted the briefcase, the phony documents were reviewed by Hitler’s best and brightest, who ordered a disastrous troop movement that enabled the Allied Forces to capture Sicily with ease.
Many, many missteps along the way plunge the operation into near-constant peril, setting up a rousing climax in which victory is snatched from the jaws of defeat. This is followed by a look at what became of the key players, including, improbably enough, the homeless chap whose lifeless body was used to hoodwink the Germans.
The five nimble cast members–Luke Antony Neville, Katie Kleiger, Mariah Copeland, Erin Ramirez and Jake Bentley Young–play 50-plus roles in total, telling the tale at an often-breakneck pace, albeit with ample breaks for the songs. Standout numbers include “Born to Lead,” “Making a Man,” and the emotional high point, “Dear Bill,” sung by Neville as Hester Legatt, the calm, competent support staffer showing her colleagues how to write a love letter to a man in the line of fire.
Neville is the warm, reserved heart of the show, but its twin engines are the sly Kleiger as smarmy operator Ewen “Monty” Montagu and the spirited Copeland as mission commander Johnny Bevan. Bevan trusts Montagu as far as he can throw him and doesn’t have much faith in Hester, the striving tea girl Jean Leslie (a spunky Ramirez) nor Charles Cholmondeley (a charmingly bumbling Bentley Young), the introverted scientist who hatches the cockamamie scheme.
The show is over-long at two hours and 35 minutes (the denouement could use some tightening in particular), but like the dead hero of the tale, it manages to stay afloat and deliver the goods.
Operation Mincemeat runs through Oct. 11 at Broadway in Chicago’s CIBC Theatre
For a full roundup of reviews of this show, visit Theatre in Chicago.
Photo by Matthew Murphy
