Broadway with Me

• Performance Date: April 4, 2025
• Seat Location: Center Orchestra – Row B, Seat 117
• Seat Price & Ticketer: $79 via Operation Mincemeat Monthly Ticket Draw
• Running Time: 2 hour and 30 minutes, including 15 minute intermission
• Rating: 10/10 (yes, actually)

I can confidently say I have a new favorite show on Broadway. I first heard of this show when “Dear Bill” randomly appeared my daylist. I absolutely loved it, and I started to love the show as a whole. I couldn’t wait for it to transfer across the ocean, and I wasn’t the only one! The hype around Operation Mincemeat has been wild, and honestly, well deserved. For the whole show, I was crying, I was laughing, and I was living.

I can truly say I loved this show. Every aspect was amazing. It’s hilarious and delightfully British. It translates pretty well to an American audience. The songs are comedic and jokes are well timed. The show does a good job balancing out the serious subject manner. We are laughing when it’s needed, and sober when it’s appropriate. You’d think with only 5 cast members the stage would feel too large, but it doesn’t. It feels rich and real, somehow crowded in the way I’d think MI5 should be. Each cast member plays more than one role, and they do it masterfully. There’s no lack of excitement; no lack of emotion. We’re racing towards the deadline right along our special agents.

The music in this show is something of note. All the songs carry weight. There’s no filler. I’m a huge fan of sea shanties, and “Sail On, Boy” is amazing. It poignant, perfectly placed in the show, and the snippet within “Just for Tonight” gives a different weight. “Dear Bill” is by far my favorite song in the show. It’s 6 minutes of realistic and heavy emotion, delivered flawlessly by Jak Marlone. The hilarity of the moment by Zoë Roberts immediately following “Das Übermensch” is an amazing button. These songs all work well with each other, easily flowing from one to another.

The set and lighting design of the show reminds me of pantomime. Set pieces fly in and out, everything’s reused as something else. We’re firmly in a 1940s war room basement. Our moments of modern tech come in the form of easily imagined fantasy. It feels like what someone in the 40s likely thought when thinking of the future. The set is rich, we’re fully in this universe.

Usually hype can be overrated. Things don’t always live up to it. I believe that Mincemeat does. It’s just as funny as was said, I can see why so many have loved it. It’s taken me a long time to write this review. I find it hard to put into words exactly how much joy this show brought me. I loved every moment of it. It goes beyond nuance, as the show is flat out amazing. Joy is hard to come by nowadays; it’s hard to not feel guilt over enjoying things with everything going on in the world right now. Operation Mincemeat left me with pure, guiltless joy. I haven’t had this much fun at a show in a long time.

Stage Door Experience