Blog: Operation Mincemeat

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I was out and about once again on Monday evening, meeting Mr P Myland for a trip to the THEATRE!

For LO! we had booked tickets to go and see Operation Mincemeat, which I have been itching to see for AGES. To my surprise Mileage had not read the book, which I thought was THE LAW for people of our age and disposition, but I VERY MUCH have and was eager to see how this AMAZING story would work out in the musical theatre environment.

SPOILERS: it worked our very well, but before we get to that bit I have to contribute a PUB REVIEW, thusly: after stumbling around various PUBS in Covent Garden and being surprised to find them BUSY on a Monday night we ended up in The Marquess Of Anglesey which from the outside, and indeed the inside too, appeared to be a completely Bog Standard Central London Tourist Pub but was staffed by a DELIGHTFUL range of Pleasant Young People, one of whom, DISTRAUGHT that a barrel was finished so they could not serve us full pints, came over a little later with FREE PINTS! We were astounded!

Anyway, duly refreshed we went a few steps down the road to The Fortune Theatre which, apparently, is one of the smallest theatres in London's Glittering West End. It was certainly tiddly depth-wise, with only about 7 rows of seats in the dress circle where we were, but all was perfectly comfortable within, possibly helped by FREE PINTS earlier.

The show itself was DEAD GOOD - it felt very FRINGE-Y, possibly because it SORT OF is. As far as I can tell it was never actually an actual Fringe show, but the manic pace, the fact that everything is done by five people, including moving sets around and so on, and the general air of "We are all in this together" certainly made it FEEL that way. Also, different characters were partly denoted by minor costume changes - OBVS there was ACTING involved, but it did remind me in many ways of the shows me and Steve did, with the major difference being that this was in The West End and ours... er... ESCHEWED such capitalistic affronts to culture. Yes, that's it.

My only minor gripe was that sometimes the songs PELTED by at such high speed with the musical backing slightly too loud that I couldn't understand what they were actually SINGING at several points, but I guess that is probably more a problem for me than for them. The songs were very Musical Theatre-type songs, although GOODNESS ME there is one called "Dear Bill" near the end of the first half that hit the audience with a WALLOP. It was sung by a clearly young man doing a comedy-ish impersonation of a middle-aged woman in the middle of a Decidely Daft show, but GOODNESS ME there weren't half some EMOTIONS.

So yes, it was dead good and lots of fun, and once we'd said our goodbyes I headed off into the cold and the London transport system full of the joys of THE THEATRE, with a very slight side helping of MILD JEALOUSY. Is it too late to pitch a revival of Hey Hey 16K: THE MUSICAL? Andrew Lloyd-Webber! CALL ME!

posted 26/11/2025 by MJ Hibbett

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