New musical on tour

There’s almost a deliberate air of mystery surrounding Operation Mincemeat: A New Musical.

People come along to it not knowing quite what to expect, says Jamie-Rose Monk who plays Bevan amongst other characters in the piece.

And that’s all part of the fun. Invariably audiences then come away having absolutely loved it, she says.

Now it’s our chance to discover it too with dates including the Mayflower Theatre, Southampton from Nov 17-21; and The Hawth, Crawley from Nov 23-28 – the tale of a gamble on a stolen corpse when the war was going against us back in 1943.

“I guess the essence of the musical is the essence of the original mission,” Jamie-Rose says. “We see five people on stage playing hundreds of different characters bringing that mad story to life. Basically, it's the remarkable story of a World War Two plot to deceive the Germans. They came up with the idea of getting a corpse and placing fake documents on the corpse and letting it wash up on the coast of Spain that they knew was full of spies. The idea was to feed false information to the Germans as a misdirection.

“It was a bold mission and the story is there but this is a comedy. It's a big story and it's big stuff and it's very cleverly written but there is poignancy in the story too. It is wonderfully crafted. There are five of us on the stage and we all have one main character and you know that the stakes are high.”

Charlotte Hannah-Williams, who plays Jean amongst other characters, is loving the experience: “We started on the road in February and we've been going since then. Mostly it's changing every week but we've had a couple of places where we've stayed for two weeks and the response has been amazing. The audiences seem to adore the show. It is a show that's got such a big name in London and you wonder how it would go if you take it out of that London bubble but it has been brilliant. On purpose a lot of the musical is kept under wraps so that it’s a bit of a surprise, but the audiences are really taking a gamble and they're coming to see it and they are really loving it.

“My main character is Jean. Jean starts off as a typical clerk. She is there to do a lot of filing and is in charge of making the tea but the character’s journey is that she has quite an important role to play. Often historically the men's names are at the forefront of what we know but this show celebrates the role of the women.”

Jamie-Rose is Bevan: “He is the big boss. He is trying to find something out there, a big mission that they could do because things are getting a bit desperate.”

And like Charlotte, Jamie-Rose is having a blast: “Touring is tiring but actually the hardest part of the show for me was learning the show. Now we're on the road it feels like we are actually enjoying the fruits of our labours. There are only five of us in it and we do everything, and I have another character in the second half. We are the ensemble as well and we're swapping around so much. It felt really overwhelming to be learning it but now I'm just loving it and it's just really great to see the different types of audiences we are getting.”