‘Operation Mincemeat’ Broadway Review: This British Import Works Way Too Hard to Be Fun

“Dead Outlaw” — now there’s a musical that knows how to put a corpse on stage. The musical about the well-traveled mummy of small-time crook Elmer McCurdy opens next month on Broadway after a run downtown last year. The great late Charles Ludlam also knew how to make full use of the riotous Grand Guignol effect of a corpse(s) in such Ridiculous Theatre classics as “Artificial Jungle” and “Stage Blood.”

Perhaps, then, it is the vaunted Old Blighty reserve and good taste that fumbles “Operation Mincemeat,” the World War II story of how the corpse of a tramp, Glyndwr Michael, fooled the Nazis into thinking the British were invading Sardinia instead of Sicily. The too-long, exhaustive and hopelessly cute production opened Thursday at the Golden Theatre after its ongoing run in London.

During World War II, the Brits gave Glyndwr Michael a new name (William Martin) and identity (Captain, Acting Major) and loaded his corpse with plenty of misleading correspondence before dumping him into the Mediterranean. They only had to wait for the body to wash up on the shores of Spain, a neutral country with strong ties to the Axis forces. It’s not a complicated tale, and it is told efficiently in the 2021 Colin Firth movie, also titled “Operation Mincemeat.” Even though the film version is a drama, it knows how to use the corpse to grab our attention from the get-go and hold it there until other story lines emerge, such as, whether or not the leader of the operation, Ewen Montague, is a spy for the U.S.S.R. There’s also a nice romantic subplot involving the comely typist Jean Leslie, who lends her own identity and photo to the Mincemeat ruse. Will she fall in love with the dashing Montagu or the nerd Charles Cholmondeley, who conceived the operation?

In the musical version, the actual features of the Operation Mincemeat aren’t made clear until halfway through Act 1. It’s also that rare musical that doesn’t have a love story. Big mistake. However, there is a love song titled “Dear Bill,” delivered by a middle-aged female apparatchik (Jak Malone) who comes up with the fraudulent love letter from Jean to Bill that will be among the corpse’s possessions. Why the makers of this musical have not given “Dear Bill” to Jean (Claire-Marie Hall) to help spark a romance with either Cholmondeley (David Cumming) or Montagu (Natasha Hodgson) is anyone’s guess. Zoe Roberts rounds out the cast of five, playing top brass Johnny Bevan.

Obviously, there’s a lot of cross-dressing here, and never has drag been used to less comic effect. Only Cumming, who is a singing-dancing-galumphing cartoon, possesses the unique features and delivery to make this kind of spoofery come alive. The other four would not qualify to audition to be “Oh, Mary!” understudies.

The antic anarchy of that Cole Escola comedy — not to mention “Dead Outlaw” and “Titanique,” which continues its riotous run Off Broadway — is almost completely missing here. Such inspired insanity makes a very brief appearance at the top of Act 2 when the company sings “Das Ubermensch,” a Nazi hip-hop song, and after the audience at the Golden Theatre dutifully applauds, Roberts asks, “Really?” In other words, welcome to Elon Musk’s Amerika.

The songs and book for “Operation Mincemeat” are written by Cumming, Hodgson, Roberts and Felix Hagan. The rinky-dink tunes elevate the latest Ozempic commercial to something worthy of Sondheim. A bright spot are the often clever lyrics — not that you will be able to understand them at the Golden. I had to check them out on YouTube since the glaring sound design by Mike Walker made them nearly unintelligible, especially when delivered by the soprano voices.

Robert Hastie provides the frenzied “Mincemeat” direction. It forced someone behind me to whisper halfway through Act 1, “This is exhausting.” Nothing kills a laugh faster than seeing actors sweat.

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