The hit musical Operation Mincemeat will make its Australian premiere at Melbourne’s Comedy Theatre in September 2027, bringing the extraordinary Second World War deception plot to audiences outside the UK and US for the first time.
Further Australian cities are expected to be announced, with a waitlist now open for the production.
The musical takes its name from the 1943 intelligence operation in which British agents used the body of a dead man, disguised as a Royal Marine, to carry forged documents suggesting the Allies planned to invade Greece and Sardinia.
The body was released off the coast of Spain in the hope that the papers would be intercepted by German sympathisers and reach Adolf Hitler. The deception helped persuade Hitler to move troops away from Sicily, allowing the Allied invasion to proceed and hastening the collapse of Italy’s fascist government.
British intelligence officers Ewen Montagu and Charles Cholmondeley were behind the plan, which has been credited with saving thousands of lives on both sides of the conflict.
Montagu’s daughter, Jennifer Montagu, said her father initially wanted the operation to remain secret. He later wrote his memoir, The Man Who Never Was, in 1953 after a journalist threatened to expose the story.
“He was told to write it because they wanted an accurate version put out but that didn’t include any things that were still secret,” Ms Montagu said.
The story’s journey from wartime intelligence operation to stage musical began when Natasha Hodgson, Zoe Roberts, David Cumming and Felix Hagan formed the comedy group SpitLip in 2017.
They set out to create a large musical based on a true story, and were drawn to the operation’s unlikely group of conspirators. “We loved that it was a small gang … we were a small gang, they were a small gang,” Hodgson said.
Operation Mincemeat brings 86 characters to the stage
Five performers play a combined 86 characters in the musical, with roles crossing gender lines. Cumming said the intention was for the audience to focus on the performers rather than fixed ideas about who they were playing.
Chloe Hart, who plays Johnny Bevan and intelligence officer Ian Fleming, said performing male characters had been liberating.
“It’s incredibly freeing not having to look glamorous … being able to just put on a suit and go up and be ‘I don’t have to stand up straight, I don’t have to look all cutesy and glamorous’, I can just be whatever I want to be,” she said.
The production made its West End debut in 2023 and received six Laurence Olivier Award nominations the following year. It won Best New Musical, while Jak Malone received the award for Best Actor in a Supporting Role in a Musical.
Malone also won a Tony Award after the show opened on Broadway in New York earlier this year.
Ms Montagu said she was proud that the musical had brought renewed attention to her father’s work.
“It’s just crazy. It’s bonkers, really,” she said.
She added that the Australian staging was particularly meaningful because Montagu had spent time in the country after his service.
