87 Characters and 1 Big Question: An Interview With the Stars of Operation Mincemeat

Eighty-seven characters, 74 five-star reviews, eight years of work, one big question standing in the way.

The journey of Operation Mincemeat from unknown fringe show to unlikely hit on the West End and now Broadway has been a long and surprising one for its creator/stars.

As the fan-favorite musical — based on the real-life World War II mission to disguise the Allied invasion of Sicily from the Axis powers — takes the stage at the Golden Theatre ahead of opening night, we gathered David Cumming (Charles Cholmondeley/cowriter), Claire-Marie Hall (Jean Leslie), Natasha Hodgson (Ewen Montague/cowriter), Jak Malone (Hester Leggatt), and Zoë Roberts (Ian Fleming/cowriter) for a wide-ranging conversation about the show’s history, its reception in the Big Apple, and, once and for all, whether or not it’s “too British for Broadway.”

This conversation has been condensed and edited for clarity.

How is New York treating you?
David Cumming: Awful. We hate it. It’s a bit boring, there’s not much to do.

Natasha (Tash) Hodgson: The buildings are quite small, which is irritating.

David: No, it’s amazing. It’s cold and dry, but apart from that, you guys love theater and really want it to exist. There’s this infectious enthusiasm from people. We’re having a lovely time, to be honest.

Tash: We love how silly you guys are. We’ve done a few previews now, and it’s been joyful to put our comedy on a USA stage. We talk all the time about how generous the audiences have been and how open they are to silliness, which obviously is our lifeblood.

Obviously, there was all this chatter about Operation Mincemeat being too British for Broadway. Tell me about that whole thing from your perspective.
David: During our West End run, there were rumblings of, “If this goes well, then the next logical step would be Broadway.” But that was such a huge jump.

Tash: And then those rumblings all went away. We had some Broadway bigwigs come in early on, and it was like, “We love the show, it’s great, but we don’t think it’s going to work.” So, we worked under the assumption that it wasn’t going to go. What was interesting was that we had more and more American audiences come in. I think those Americans reopened that conversation for us in a way that we weren’t expecting.

But there was a lot of chat around that question. Is the humor going to translate? Will they care about the story? I think we felt fairly confident. We’re very protective of the show and what we did and what we’ve written. There wasn’t really a lot of discussion between the five of us about changing a whole bunch of stuff [for New York]. We were firm that we wanted to present our show because we’re proud of it and love it and have faith in it.

In that regard, what have you learned about the way the show works for Americans over this preview period?
Jak Malone: Broadway audiences are so much more willing to be vocal and present in the space with us. A lot of our fans had flown over from London, so we knew we were in safe hands for our first couple of previews. As those fans dwindled away, there were still loud voices in the room. People are still so engaged. [When I sing “Dear Bill”] I can hear the sniffles, the audible sobs. I always caught them in London, but in New York, the applause is going on longer. Some people stand up after it. People weren’t doing that in London at all.

After months of hearing “too British for Broadway,” it does creep in and you do think, “Oh, no, what will it be like?” After those first few shows, it was like, “Hey, they’re here for us!” It was a revelation.

Tash: Yeah. Their favorite bits are our favorite bits: the physical comedy. There’s a great tradition of vaudeville and Laurel and Hardy and the Marx Brothers in America. We’re huge fans of all that stuff. Traditionally, Britain doesn’t have quite that same physical comedy tradition. The moments in the show that we try to pay homage to that type of comedy really seem to pay off. Which is a long way of saying they like hats being passed around by a bunch of idiots. But so do we.

David: The question of “Is it too British?” has somewhat fallen away now. Without tooting our trumpets too loudly, these characters are well drawn, quite relatable. Just because they’re British doesn’t mean you don’t understand how these humans feel. That translates more than “They’ve got British accents and it’s about British history, therefore, no one’s going to care.”

Tash: It helps that all the characters are real. These are people who genuinely lived and died and did this thing. We have tried to make sure that the essence of these real people comes through alongside all the silliness.

I saw the show in February 2024 at the Fortune Theatre when you were coming to the end of your West End tenure. What has the break between runs done for your connection to the material?
Claire-Marie Hall: Well, I didn’t have a break. I didn’t even have a month. I got Christmas. Do you know what was really nice? Having to do it with a completely different cast. I’ve been doing the show with these guys for like five years beforehand, so getting to discover new aspects of her [with other actors], and then coming to a new city, back to these guys, and us rediscovering all of this together while being the same original group has been a lovely experience. I’ve managed to have the best of both worlds.

Tash: That must be a nice way of saying you’ve never stopped working in your entire life. That is not the best of both worlds, Claire.

Claire-Marie: You’re mad. You went to the beach. I went to my house at Christmas. [Laughs]

Zoë Roberts: The difficulty with doing a long-running show is that it becomes autopilot. Ours has to be so precise, or the entire thing falls apart. You’re in danger of becoming part of a machine rather than remembering to ully live in it every time you perform. We’d done it, what, 400 times on the West End by the time we had that break.

Tash: Plus, it was 800 times before that, of course.

Zoë: What was more important for us as the writers was to have a think about how the show is going to be produced and what theater it’s going to be in, all that exciting stuff. But yeah, creatively, we needed a break from these people, and it’s been nice to rediscover them and go, “Oh, I remember this bit.”

David: And alternatively, “That bit that I used to do is totally and utterly pointless. It doesn’t need to happen.” That’s something that’s grown out of taking it back to square one to find the truth of these characters. This is, what, the sixth iteration of Operation Mincemeat, and each time it feels like we’re purifying it to its perfect essence, hopefully.

Tash: And also, we’ve managed to put in some extra treats in the set, some little things that weren’t there in the West End. So even if you have seen the show in London, you ain’t seen it in New York, which feels like the final boss version of the show to us.

Zoë: What’s been nice, as well…Because we’ve built this show gradually over seven, eight years, we felt like we were in the trenches of fringe theater in the UK. Even when we arrived on the West End, we were largely unknown. It was endless conversations of going “So, it’s called Operation Mincemeat.” Here, people have heard of it. From the first day, there was a kind of excitement that we’re here, which is the nicest possible welcome you can have when you’re about to start a very grueling run.

Tash: Up until this point, every single time we’ve stepped on stage, and this isn’t necessarily a bad thing, we felt like we had to prove ourselves. It felt like every night people were like “I’ve no idea what this is, but I’ll give it a go.” Here, the buy-in is already present. Like, if you’ve made it to Broadway, there’s a reason. It feels like we can breathe out slightly. “Let’s tell you a story” versus “we promise this will be good in the end.”

Jak: The warmth, the openness of the community has been such a surprise. I went to see The Roommate, and I ended up having martinis at Sardi’s with Patti LuPone that night. People are just willing to hear you out and get to know you. We’re having loads of weird moments like that already, where you’re just like “This is huge,” and no one around me is acting like it’s huge, but it’s huge. It’s really wonderful. Not like London. Never going back.