Reviews: Operation Mincemeat and The Call Centre of Cthulhu
The award-winning musical about a WWII mission and an indie horror comedy inspired by H.P. Lovecraft are both worth catching
The Broadway and West End musical Operation Mincemeat: A New Musical (Rating: ✭✭✭✭), now in a handsome touring production that fits beautifully in the Royal Alex, deserves full marks for ambition and level of difficulty.
It combines World War Two history, espionage, the dual traits of British pomposity and reserve, as well as feminism, class and self-empowerment, and wraps it all up in an unlikely musical mixture of farce, music hall, sea shanty and even rap.
It doesn’t all come together — it’s difficult to get oriented in the first five or ten minutes, for instance. But when it works, it’s tremendously entertaining. Beneath the fast-paced, bustling stage business you can feel a genuine heart beating. And the central story is pretty thrilling.
In 1943, the British Secret Service is trying to generate ideas on how to get the Germans away from Sicily — where the Allies plan to invade — and redirect them to Sardinia. Swaggering MI5 agent Ewen Montagu (Katie Kleiger) takes a brilliant Hail Mary idea from the bumbling, myopic Charles Chalmondeley (Jake Bentley Young) to their superior, Johnny Bevan (Mariah Copeland).
The idea? Find a British corpse, plant fake papers around him about the supposed top secret mission to invade Sardinia, drop him off at the target area and hope that the Germans find him, his water-soaked briefcase and take the bait.
After Bevan gets the okay from Winston Churchill, the mission is put in place, but they need to find a dead body, construct a convincing history for him and get marines to deliver him via submarine to the desired area. And cross their fingers that the Germans move out of Sicily. They also need more good thinkers; enter Jean Leslie (Erin Ramirez), whom they pluck from the all-female typing pool, and Hester Leggatt (Luke Antony Neville), a sort of office manager.
Creators David Cumming, Felix Hagan, Natasha Hodgson and Zoë Roberts, many of whom starred in the show when it began modestly in little theatres before storming the West End in 2023, have a lot to pack in, but under director Robert Hastie, they do so with breathtaking theatricality. Don’t be surprised if it takes you a while to recognize the actors as they morph from overworked male MI5 agents (including future James Bond creator Ian Fleming!) and seamen to female office workers and nightclub dancers.
Ben Stones’ period costumes and Mark Henderson’s lighting ensure these transformations are quick and unfussy, played out against Stones’ spare but versatile set with a grid-like backdrop that includes lots of surprises, especially in the second act.
The score draws on everything from military marches and Gilbert & Sullivan-style ditties to music hall numbers and (in the least convincing songs) hip-hop and rap. These latter numbers feel out of place, as if the creators wanted to cash in on the Hamilton craze.
While I could make out most of the lyrics, the murky sound mix on opening night meant a couple of stanzas went MIA, especially those involving a figure called Sir Bernard Spilsbury (Neville), a shady figure responsible for finding the corpse.
And there are a couple of tonal shifts involving singing, dancing Nazis that may have worked in 2019, when the show originated, but in a world in which the far right is a serious contemporary threat, feel more awkward and unfunny.
The quintet of actors is superb, so much so that this is one of the few musicals I’d like to revisit so I can savour each performer’s versatile work. Everyone gets their moment to shine — whether it’s a big jazzy number (there’s a song called “A Glitzy Finale”) or a farcical scene involving phones and a briefcase. I’m always a sucker for a nerdy character who finds his or her inner hero, so Young’s Charles — his legs gloriously akimbo in Jenny Arnold’s superb choreography — was especially satisfying.
But Neville deserves special mention for his understated delivery of the show’s most poignant number, in which the proper, straight-laced Hester composes a letter to the fictional corpse named Bill. A simple waltz with everyday lyrics about gardening and neighbourly visits, the song grows in power — Hester inadvertently drops the name “Tom” — to be unshowy but completely devastating. Afterwards, the way Hastie has Hester compose herself with her back to the audience adds to the effect.
After a bunch of theatrical red herrings and distractions in the second act — including that silly Nazi number — the way the creators conclude the show is also deeply satisfying.
Not all of Operation Mincemeat’s targets hit, but the ones that do are absolute theatrical destroyers.
Operation Mincemeat: A New Musical continues at the Royal Alexandra Theatre (260 King West) until Dec. 13. Ticket details here
Lovecraftian lunacy
Who but Eldritch Theatre’s Eric Woolfe would be able to connect the phantasmagorical Gothic horrors of H.P. Lovecraft with the banality of contemporary telemarketing?
That’s what happens in The Call Centre of Cthulhu (Rating: ✭✭✭✭), a creepy, messy, deeply demented exploration of the macabre. Woolfe plays Irving Irving, a meek call centre worker who works at the town’s call centre. Wearing a sweater vest and sporting old-fashioned specs and a white moustache, he resembles a poor relation of that Monopoly guy with the monocle and cane.
Public services have all been gutted, with the call centre the only lifeline in town. (Calls arrive via dozens of suspended tin cans; the terrific set and costumes are by Melanie McNeill.) And so Irving hears about lost Necronomicons, mysterious marine sightings and brutal local murders. Are they connected?
And what about Irving’s secret crush, Moxie, or his tyrannical nepo baby boss? How do they figure in the many-tentacled narrative?
Woolfe eventually gets there, even if the journey is a little circuitous, punctuated with lots of impressive card tricks and only a couple of technical snafus. He’s supported with some hideous puppets, each voiced by him with character actor commitment.
Look for a brilliant bit of POV switching near the end, when we get to see the perspective of one of his puppets, and see a version of Irving in miniature.
It all amounts to low-fi, highly imaginative Lovecraftian lunacy, created and performed by one of the theatre scene’s true originals.
The Call Centre of Cthulhu continues at the Red Sandcastle Theatre (922 Queen East) until Nov. 8. Ticket details here
Coming up: Broadway stars Denée Benton, Audra McDonald and Carrie Coon discuss the new season of The Gilded Age; a review of the National Ballet of Canada’s Romeo and Juliet; and more.