There is no shortage of musicals that have been record-breaking successes in the West End but flop upon their transfer across the pond to Broadway.
Andrew Lloyd Webber’s 1984 rock musical Starlight Express, for instance, ran for 7,406 performances in London but only 761 in New York. More recently, Tim Rice, Benny Andersson, and Björn Ulvaeus’s Chess, which is an allegory for the Cold War tensions of the 1980s, ran in the West End for three years but failed on Broadway. Twice. The first production closed after only two months in 1988 and an inexplicable 2025 revival closed this past June after just 241 performances.
Chalk it up to cultural differences.
But there appears to be some common ground between the Brits and us Yanks when it comes to embarrassing World War II-era Germans, for that enterprise has been turned into an Olivier- and Tony Award-winning musical comedy titled Operation Mincemeat. And its national tour is being launched at the Providence Performing Arts Center come September, before visiting 25 cities across North America. The show will also be heading to international locations including Australia, China, Mexico, and New Zealand.
The plot that drives this musical is based on a stranger-than-fiction true story. In 1943, British Intelligence agents hatched an elaborate scheme to convince the Germans that the Allied forces were planning to invade Greece rather than Sicily. The plan, code- named Operation Mincemeat, involved planting forged documents upon a dead body before setting him adrift in neutral Spanish waters.
The dead man used in the deception was Glyndwr Michael, an unhoused Welsh drifter who died in London after ingesting rat poison. British intelligence obtained his unclaimed body and created the fictitious identity of Major William Martin of the Royal Marines, outfitting him with fake letters from home, military IDs, and falsified invasion documents. The false intelligence found its way to the German High Command, was evidently believed, and when Allied troops invaded Sicily, the enemy was caught off guard.
Operation Mincemeat was the first full-length musical written and composed by the British cabaret-style comedy troupe SpitLip, which consists of David Cumming, Felix Hagan, Natasha Hodgson, and Zoë Roberts. Collectively, they mined this odd act of espionage for every imaginable laugh, be it big, small, or shameless. Particularly shameless.
Then they added an infectious and untraditional score that included expositional rap, sea shanties, and an electronic dance music number with K-Popping Nazis. There’s a ballad as well, “Dear Bill,” that begins as a comedic, fictional love letter the MI5 team needs for their undercover spy operation but which gently shifts into a sober personal reflection by one of the agents.
The musical was first introduced at the 2019 London Fringe before heading to London’s West End in 2023 and Broadway in 2025, and there is still an air of self-aware, irreverent, avant garde fringiness to the venture. It consists of a five-person cast of men and women who play dozens of roles each regardless of gender, ala the clever British-born mystery parody The 39 Steps and the musical comedy A Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder, which is based on a British novel.
According to the creatives in a recent interview on Variety’s theater podcast, “Stagecraft,” each character sits on the spectrum between “realistic” and “complete cartoon,” which pretty much captures the temperament of this musical. A four-piece band (keyboard, synthesizer, bass guitar, and drums) makes the show particularly portable as a touring production.
A vast majority of the reviews of the Broadway production have been exceptionally positive. According to Entertainment Weekly, the show is “a breath of fresh air.” Variety noted that the musical is like “Monty Python on speed,” in a good way. The Washington Post called Operation Mincemeat “both unabashedly goofy and exceptionally smart.”
Less enthralled, The New York Post reported that “the madcap World War II comedy from London is an often tiring wallop of frenetic hyperactivity. There’s ample cleverness and some witty lines, but the Red Bull tweeness gets grating.” In other words, fans of Red Bull will love it.
It’s been suggested that the reasons for the prestigious Providence launch of the show’s national tour reside in PPAC’s world-class facilities, strategic location, and archetypal audiences who serve as a reliable barometer for how this musical will fare elsewhere in the country.
Me, I’m thinking that it’s because of the Battle of Port Judith, where US warships chased down a rogue German U-boat off the coast of Rhode Island just hours before the end of World War II. Humiliating Nazis is part of who we are, so Operation Mincemeat is a good fit. If a new revival of The Producers ever goes on national tour, it will surely be launched here.
It’s just a theory.
Operation Mincemeat runs from Sept. 20 – 26 at the Providence Performing Arts Center, 220 Weybosset St., Providence. Contact ppacri.org or 401-421-2787 for tickets, $61-$115, includes fee.
Bob Abelman is an award-winning theater critic who also writes for The Boston Globe. Connect with him on Facebook.