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Last year, the hit West End musical \u201cOperation Mincemeat\u201d embarked on a mischievous publicity campaign. \u201cAre we too British for Broadway?\u201d it asked, inviting Americans on its email list and via social media to fill out an online questionnaire<\/a> about whether, for instance, they had trouble understanding British accents. (\u201cNo,\u201d 90.2 percent of the respondents said.)<\/p>\n After making its way across the ocean armed with high expectations and an Olivier Award for best new musical, the show, a screwball comedy about an unlikely World War II spy operation, will open March 20 at the Golden Theater on Broadway. Its lengthy preview period is giving it ample time to adjust to the particular sensibilities of a New York audience, unaccented or otherwise.<\/p>\n Some of what the cast and crew have found has been surprising, said the director, Robert Hastie, who was so eager for early on-the-ground feedback that he strode onstage before the curtain rose at the first preview and boldly (or maybe recklessly) gave out his email address to the packed house.<\/p>\n \u201cThis show has always grown and developed from what the audience has been kind enough to give back,\u201d he told the crowd. \u201cIf you have any thoughts when you come away from tonight, we\u2019d be really, really grateful.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n The real Operation Mincemeat was a sleight-of-hand spy mission in 1943, in which the British dressed a dead body as a Royal Marines officer, outfitted it with fake invasion plans designed to hide the Allies\u2019 real intentions and then dumped it into the sea to be discovered by the Nazis. Its musical version has had a charmed trajectory in London, opening in 2019 at the tiny New Diorama Theater before settling in at the Fortune Theater in the West End, where it\u2019s still playing.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n What Hastie has learned from the audiences so far,: first, that Broadway theatergoers don\u2019t need to be walked through lengthy historical expositions. \u201cWe\u2019ve been surprised at how much of a lean-forward audience this is,\u201d he said. \u201cThey want the story told more thriftily, and so we\u2019ve taken a couple of lines out here and there.\u201d<\/p>\n Also: \u201cAmerican audiences are quick and sophisticated, but they also love the dumb stuff, like the slapstick and the physical comedy, almost more than the British,\u201d Hastie said. This has led to, among other things, a ratcheting up of the comic mayhem in several scenes involving briefcases that may or may not contain incriminating documents, and that various characters are trying to retain, get rid of or conceal.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Written and composed by the comedy group SpitLip, the production features five actors playing a total of 82 characters. Three of the actors \u2014 David Cumming, Natasha Hodgson and Zo\u00eb Roberts \u2014 are part of SpitLip; the other two, Jak Malone and Claire-Marie Hall, are not. (The fourth SpitLip member, Felix Hagan, doesn\u2019t perform in the show.) The original cast has followed the show to New York.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Having an original cast of performer-writers with comedy backgrounds has made for an unusually nimble production, as the actors can rewrite lines and reconfigure scenes themselves. While in the show\u2019s earlier iterations they often reworked things on the fly, that\u2019s no longer viable now that they are on Broadway \u2014 among other things, unexpected line changes mess up the lighting cues, Hastie said.<\/p>\n They came to New York prepared to treat the audience almost as \u201cthe sixth member of the cast,\u201d Cumming said, and to rejigger the show as needed.<\/p>\n \u201cIf there are lines that don\u2019t work, references that don\u2019t work, moments where we feel it\u2019s not quite landing \u2014 if we\u2019re difficult to understand \u2014 we\u2019re ready and willing to put on the old boots again and make new changes,\u201d Hodgson said.<\/p>\n Changes have been small, inserted mostly to un-muddy various points of cultural divergence. \u201cPublic school\u201d (as in Eton, the school several main characters attend) was changed to \u201cprivate school,\u201d because the words mean opposite things in Britain and the United States.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n A reference to \u201cFleming\u201d (as in Ian Fleming, the author of the James Bond spy novels and a character in the musical) was sharpened to include his first name. And \u201cNumber 10,\u201d the British shorthand for the prime minister\u2019s office, was changed to the more-recognizable-to-foreigners \u201cDowning Street.\u201d<\/p>\n Finally, the scene-setting voice-over that begins the show was tweaked to point out that the story is, in fact, true. \u201cA lot of Americans didn\u2019t realize it was a true story because so much of it was fantastical,\u201d said Jon Thoday, a lead producer of the musical.<\/p>\n In London, the production enjoys an unusually intimate relationship with its fans, a noisy and opinionated bunch. The most passionate ones, known as Mincefluencers, have been known to show up at the theater en masse, cosplaying \u201cMincemeat\u201d characters<\/a>. Many have seen the production dozens of times and can recite every line.<\/p>\n An estimated 300 Mincefluencers flew to New York for the first preview, cheering so raucously after the songs that the noise sometimes drowned out the actors trying to go on with the show. Afterward, the fans waited outside the Golden for the cast to emerge and then burst into a full rendition of the \u201cMincemeat\u201d song \u201cSail on, Boys,\u201d<\/a> right on 45th Street.<\/p>\n Inside the theater, where the production team was having a post-show meeting, the song could be heard through the walls. \u201cBloody hell,\u201d Hastie said. \u201cIs this normal on Broadway \u2014 they just repeat the show on the street?\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n The Golden, with its 800 or so seats, is nearly twice as large as the 435-seat Fortune, the show\u2019s London venue, but the stage footprint is the same. That means the production has not had to adjust its timing, planned out to the split second, for scene and costume changes. \u201cSome of the costume changes are very, very fast,\u201d Malone said. (That is an understatement.)<\/p>\n The real-life operation has been portrayed in other media before, including in a 2010 book by Ben Macintyre<\/a> and a 2022 Netflix film starring Colin Firth and Matthew Macfadyen. But though its absurdity and audacity make it a delicious object of fascination, it seemed like a far-fetched, even preposterous, idea for a musical comedy.<\/p>\n Hodgson first heard about it on a family vacation when her younger brother, Joe, told her about a podcast episode<\/a> that piqued his interest. \u201cHe said, \u2018I\u2019m listening to a story that should be a musical,\u2019\u201d Hodgson said. SpitLip had been writing for some time, to critical but not commercial success, and Hodgson couldn\u2019t imagine doing a show about the war. \u201cI was like, \u2018Shut up, Joe.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n But she listened to the episode anyway, and was mesmerized. \u201cI couldn\u2019t believe how crazy and chaotic the story was,\u201d she said. \u201cIt was a World War II mission, but I was like, \u2018Who cares? It\u2019s an amazing spy farce with an enormous heart at its center,\u2019\u201d she said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n The group made two important decisions early on. One: Though the story contains multitudes, they would confine the cast to just five people playing all the parts. (Hats and mustaches do a lot of work.) Two: They would stick to the \u201cgender-blank\u201d casting they had used in previous SpitLip work. Sometimes, men play women and women play men; other times, they don\u2019t.<\/p>\n \u201cIf I can play a policeman, why not play a male?\u201d said Zo\u00eb <\/strong>Roberts, who plays, among other parts, Johnny Bevan, the MI5 official overseeing the operation. Having women depict the conceited upper-class men who orchestrated the British war effort allowed them to send up the men\u2019s overconfident entitlement. \u201cIn the hands of a woman performer, the role becomes a commentary on the power structure,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n By the same token, the role of Hester, an older secretary \u2014 a showstopping part with a heartbreaking song about loss and grief \u2014 was written specifically for a male actor, and is performed by Malone. It helped him win the Olivier Award in 2024 for best supporting actor in a musical.<\/p>\n Oddly enough, the gender of the actors doesn\u2019t feel like a big deal when you watch the show. \u201cGender is a hot topic, and there\u2019s a generation of people who are afraid of that conversation,\u201d Hodgson said. \u201cWe wanted this to be a place where it\u2019s touched on lightly, where gender melts away, and where people who don\u2019t understand might come and see that it\u2019s not alien and frightening.\u201d<\/p>\n There\u2019s another thing that Hastie, the director, has noticed about the New York audiences, at least at this singular historical moment: a craving for the chance to affirm the principles of democracy that animated World War II and that quietly underpin the production. Typically, the song \u201cDas \u00dcbermensch,\u201d<\/a> a razzle-dazzle-y faux K-Pop boy-band-esque number featuring the cast dressed as stylish Nazis, plays purely for laughs, much the way \u201cSpringtime for Hitler\u201d<\/a> does in \u201cThe Producers.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n But something has shifted in New York, Hastie said, and audiences have been cheering and applauding not at the humor so much as at the opportunity to denounce what the Nazis represent.<\/p>\n \u201cThe show is really hitting the audiences in a different place,\u201d he said. \u201cNot just because of the difference in nationality or culture, but because the world is changing really fast.\u201d<\/p>\n There\u2019s a sense from the audiences that \u201cwe want to defeat those guys because they\u2019re evil and because democracy, and freedom, matter,\u201d he added. \u201cThis is musical comedy, but it\u2019s also something that people are getting really invested in.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n