Theatre reviews: Operation Mincemeat | The Turn Of the Screw
It may still feel like a small-scale fringe musical at times, but Operation Mincemeat has no shortage of energy, ingenuity or humanity, writes Joyce McMillan
Operation Mincemeat, King’s Theare, Edinburgh ★★★★
The Turn Of The Screw, Perth Theatre ★★★★
Mixed messages are the theme of the show, in SplitLip’s current UK touring production of Operation Mincemeat. The plot, after all, revolves around the true story of how, in 1943, British intelligence succeeded in confusing the German high command about their planned re-invasion of southern Europe to the extent that the initial landings in Sicily met almost no opposition.
There are also, though, mixed messages coming from the production itself, which still has the slightly startled look of a small-scale fringe musical that now finds itself on tour to the UK’s biggest theatres. It also attracts a notably mixed crowd, in which a young fandom attracted by the show’s witty musical satire on traditional British Second World War nostalgia rub shoulders with older theatregoers who seem to see in it the same slightly self-mocking, but still deeply self-satisfied, image of WW2 derring-do to be found in the 2021 film of the same story.
Yet whatever its appeal, it’s impossible not to be impressed by the huge energy, ingenuity and humanity that power this show, written by David Cumming, Felix Hagan, Natasha Hodgson and Morgan Phillips, and first seen in 2019. Featuring a tiny cast of five - doubling and trebling roles in classic Fringe style - the story tells of how a mixed bunch of operatives, including an arrogant, fun-loving toff, a serious scientist, a loyal middle-aged secretary and a bright young woman escaping the typing pool - come up with a plan to dress a dead body in the uniform of a senior RAF officer, provide it with a pile of documents suggesting that Allied troops are heading for Sardinia rather than Sicily, and leave it to wash up on the coast of Spain.
All of this is told through a sharp, punchy script, and a playlist of 20 fine original songs, ranging from the merrily satirical - the upper-class operatives' anthem Born To Lead - to the devastatingly heartfelt, in the secretary Hester’s imagined wartime letter to a fiancé, Dear Bill.
And in Robert Hastie’s production, this is all delivered to near-perfection by a brilliantly hard-working cast led by Holly Sumpton as the toff, Sean Carey as the scientist, and Christian Andrews as Hester; and wrapped - for this major tour - in some truly spectacular set, lighting and sound effects, which bring a sense of the sheer scale of that terrifying global conflict into the grubby office spaces of wartime London, where this remarkable story unfolds.
Blackeyed Theatre’s current touring version of Henry James’s great 1898 ghost story The Turn Of The Screw is, by contrast, a truly radical show, based on James’s famously disturbing tale of a nameless governess who accepts a post looking after two orphaned children at the country house of their guardian uncle; only to find the place apparently haunted by the malign spirits of the children’s previous governess and the master’s former valet, both now dead.
The story is brilliantly ambiguous about how reliable the governess’s narrative is, or can possibly be; but in Morgan Lloyd Malcolm’s superb adaptation for our time, James’s light-touch framing narrative is developed into an exhausting perpetual confrontation between the governess - trying desperately and repeatedly to tell her tale of possible child abuse - and an archetypal male figure who treats her account with disbelief and scorn.
In Nicky Allpress’s powerful and visually striking production, the governess is brilliantly played by Amy Tara, with strong support from Jim Fish as The Man; in a tale that chills the soul at the best of times, but here also breaks the heart, with its vivid understanding of how, like this governess trapped in limbo, women must still often struggle and struggle again, to make themselves truly heard.
Operation Mincemeat is at the King’s, Edinburgh, until 7 November; The Turn of the Screw is at Perth Theatre until 7 November, and at Dundee Rep, 24-27 March 2027.
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