We’re going a little out of our comfort zone today. We haven’t really reviewed actual theatre comedy since The Unfriend starring Lee Mack, but hey – what is life without challenges?

It all began on New Year’s Eve… eve. That is a thing, right? We were waiting at Waterloo station for one of our Surrey pals to arrive and, thanks to them getting on the slow train instead of the fast one (country folk, eh?), we had time to kill. Thankfully, the semi-new Victory Pub inside the station has an excellent gin selection, so we ordered a couple of double Saplings and got comfortable.

A short wander over Hungerford bridge and down the Strand brought us to the Fortune Theatre – recently vacated by The Woman in Black after a somewhat staggering 30-year run, and now home to our show for the evening, Operation Mincemeat.

This gleeful WWII spoof has been on a steady collision course with the West End since 2020, and it’s easy to see why. On our night, the cast – Roshani Abbey, Chloe Hart, Danny Becker, Peter McGovern and Alex Young – share the load effortlessly, switching characters, accents, dance styles and hats with dizzying speed.

There are no backing dancers. No flashy effects. It’s slick, but deliberately scrappy where it matters – a larky retelling of the real-life intelligence plot involving a corpse, a briefcase of fake war plans and some extremely hopeful British bluffing. The story loosely follows awkward MI5 brainbox Charles Cholmondeley (McGovern) and smooth-talking narcissist Ewen Montagu (Young), but really this is an ensemble show. The cast’s virtuosic multitasking is the point.

The first-half climax alone is worth the ticket: a frantic cut between a drunken night out on the dancefloor and a solemn submarine mission, with the same performers playing both scenes. It’s bold, ridiculous and lands perfectly.

The songs are sharp, dense and relentlessly funny – vaudeville at heart, with a modern, Hamilton-esque snap to the rhymes (Chloe Hart definitely has bars). There’s none of the usual musical theatre sugar here: no romance, no life lessons, no earnest gazing into the middle distance.

And then comes ‘Dear Bill’. A single, devastating ballad delivered by Becker as secretary Hester Leggatt, dictating a “fake” letter soaked in very real pain. It’s tender, odd, quietly queer – and it gives the whole show unexpected depth without breaking its stride.

In one of the show’s more poignant moments, the true identity of the aforementioned corpse is revealed and his story briefly told. It turns out he was from a village in Wales just next door to some friends of ours. Of all the beautifully comic fourth-wall breaks in the show, this is the one that will stick with us – a reminder that this is so much more than just a jovial tale.

And really, it’s a delight from start to finish. The only genuinely odd moment is a Nazi R&B number called ‘Das Übermensch’ which opens Act Two and looks like the most poorly thought-out Rihanna music video ever. It’s not even that the song is bad – it’s just completely unrelated to anything else that happens. But this is pure nit-picking.

Operation Mincemeat is smart, silly and strangely moving. It earns every bit of its West End success. It’s safe to say the operation has been a total success.

Clown Stars: * * * * *

@Fortune Theatre, London

If you’d like to see Operation Mincemeat, tickets are available at ATG Tickets