‘Operation Mincemeat’ Stars Share How Their ‘Quietly Queer’ Show Took Broadway By Storm

The five-person cast of “Operation Mincemeat” completed their transatlantic victory lap at Sunday’s Tony Awards with a dynamite performance and a much-deserved win for actor Jak Malone.

But David Cumming, one of the musical’s stars and a member of the London-based SpitLip theater comedy troupe that wrote its book, music and lyrics, has learned to look beyond such accolades when considering his show’s Broadway legacy.

“My takeaway from this whole journey is that a small group of misfits can work together and make quite seismic shifts,” he told HuffPost in an interview days before the Tonys. “You’ve got to be making the art you want to see. Really, that’s the big award.”

“Operation Mincemeat,” directed by Robert Hastie and now playing at New York’s John Golden Theatre, is a satirical take on a real-life British espionage mission that took place during World War II.

Two intelligence officers, Ewen Montagu (played by Natasha Hodgson) and Charles Cholmondeley (Cumming), enact a plan to outwit Nazi Germany by planting disinformation on the body of a homeless man dressed up as a high-ranking official named Major William Martin.

The body is then dropped into the ocean off the coast of Spain and, upon discovery by authorities, leads the Germans to believe the Allied forces were planning to invade Sardinia rather than Sicily, their actual target. Though often overlooked by history, the mission was critical to the Allies’ invasion of Sicily in July 1943, and thousands of lives were saved.

Cumming and Hodgson wrote “Operation Mincemeat” with SpitLip members Felix Hagan and Zoë Roberts, with Malone and Claire-Marie Hall joining the cast ahead of its premiere U.K. staging in 2019. The Broadway production is a transfer from London’s West End, where it debuted in 2023 and won Olivier Awards for Best Musical and Best Actor in a Supporting Role for Malone.

Much of the buzz on “Operation Mincemeat” has emphasized its unusual casting, which sees all five actors inhabiting a total of 85 characters, often of different genders than their own. Malone, for instance, portrays female intelligence secretary Hester Leggatt, who relates a poignant tale of lost love in the musical’s showstopper, “Dear Bill,” a “magnum opus of quiet grief.”

To get into character, Malone looked to the memory of his late grandmother, Nanny Joan.

“People who weren’t in the family or didn’t know her very well might’ve found her to be a bit joyless.” he said. “Whereas as her grandson and as her favorite grandchild, I knew her to be magical. I’m gratified at being able to hold a bit of my Nanny Joan with me each night.”

Having “Dear Bill” captured for posterity on the musical’s cast album is also a highlight.

“I don’t read music, so when I want to learn a song, I have to listen to the performer 100 times to learn it and get it in my body, and forget what they did to try and do my version,” Malone said. “So knowing people out there are doing the same thing with something I’m a part of is wonderful. I’m like, ‘Thank goodness I’ve left a little stamp on this thing that’s fulfilled my life and kept me going so many years.’”

Though Cumming and his SpitLip cohorts have embraced “gender unconcerned” casting, doing so in “Operation Mincemeat” allowed them to lend a queer slant to a story that’s predominately about cisgender men.

“I talk about the show being quietly queer, because there’s nothing in the script that suggests this is a queer show,” he said. “The lens that’s put in front of it is the queerness that you see. We raise the question of, why can’t women walk around with swagger and own a space? Why can’t we see male-presenting bodies sit with loneliness and sadness and be vulnerable?”

He went on to note: “I believe queer joy is an act of resistance. It’s a viewpoint that we have, it’s a political ideology that we can look at and view the world through, and that’s what the show does.”

Though scenes in the musical seem to reflect America’s current political climate, Cumming and Malone say much of that is unintentional, though they’d like audiences to find a topical message amid their show’s mix of “joy and truth telling.”

“We all agree right now we can’t let fascists win, and that feels like a really important thing to be saying,” Cumming said. “We’re just saying, ‘Hey, this happened to us once. Here’s some advice.’ I think because we’re British, we’re allowed to say it loudly and clearly, without getting as much pushback.”

Shortly before the Tony Awards on June 8, photographer Michael Kushner captured the “Operation Mincemeat” cast backstage at the Golden Theatre. Check out some of his images below.