5 actors play 87 characters in Mirvish’s ‘Operation Mincemeat.’ Here’s how they pull it off

Now, the Tony-winning “Operation Mincemeat” is on its North American tour, with a stop at Toronto’s Royal Alexandra Theatre until Dec. 13. The musical comedy follows five British MI5 agents’ plan to trick Hitler’s troops by planting the body of a fake Allied soldier named “Bill Martin” with fabricated military plans about an Allied invasion of Sardinia.

“It’s so fun and so full of crazy, classic, quintessential British eccentricity meets a spy caper, meets macabre dark humour,” Cumming said about the operation. “It changed the face of the war and beat the Nazis. We just couldn’t help but latch onto it.”

Deception is part of both the true story and its on-stage execution. Every night, a five-person cast plays 87 characters on stage in gender-blind roles, bringing out themes from a decades-old mission that resonate today.

The “marriage between form and content” was realized during the making. “I would love to say we decided this from the beginning, because it makes us look like absolute geniuses,” Cumming joked.

“You’re watching five people in the bunker use sleight of hand and deception … to convince 100,000 Nazis to go to the wrong place,” he continued. “What you’re actually seeing on stage is five people using sleight of hand to convince 800 people a night that they’re seeing 87 people and moving them in an emotional way.”

Five people using sleight of hand

The script says the show is meant for a five-person cast and that gender-swapping “should not be pointed, exaggerated, or even acknowledged.” For Cumming, who originated the role of the dorkish agent Charles Cholmondeley on the West End and Broadway, “It’s just more fun that way.”

Jake Bentley Young portrays Cholmondeley in Toronto, alongside Mariah Copeland as Johnny Bevan, Katie Kleiger as Ewen Montagu, Luke Antony Neville as Hester Leggatt and Erin Ramirez as Jean Leslie. Each actor also doubles as a handful of secondary roles, from bedazzled boy band-esque Nazis to sea shanty-singing submariners.

Copeland plays the most characters in the cast. She said she will occasionally close her eyes and shake out her Bevan — the prickly MI5 agent in charge — as a “physical reset” before embodying the next.

“I literally have to wipe it,” she said of a particularly emotional, quick change in Act Two. “I intentionally stopped taking stuff with me because it’s just too hard for me to flip.”

For Ramirez, reading part of Ben Macintyre’s biography about the mission led her to discover “little tidbits” about her 19-year-old MI5 clerk character,  such as how Jean would constantly run everywhere.

“I just place myself, Erin, in 1943 and put on a British accent,” the actress laughed. “The audience is going to feel Jean in those circumstances if I find the true place in myself to pull from.”

Young knows that pressure comes with the role of Cholmondeley.

“It gives you permission to put your own spin on it … You can let it physically fly, as long as you have the heart to it,” he said, recalling Cumming’s advice to “throw spaghetti at the wall and see what sticks” when it came to embodying the role.

Embedding gender-blind casting

The script outlines just two casting rules: Montagu should not be played by a cisgender man and Hester should not be played by a cisgender woman.

On stage, Kleiger embodies Montagu’s insufferable masculine dominance as the operation’s co-developer. We are first introduced to the agent with his feet propped up on a desk. Men portraying arrogant men has been a staple for 200 years, the actress said. This interpretation opens the floor for gender commentary.

“If the curtain came up on a man sitting with his feet up on a desk and started singing at you about why he’s so great, I’m sorry, I would leave,” Kleiger continued. “This allows everyone in the audience to lean in, as opposed to tune out, and go, ‘OK, this is not something I’ve seen before.’”

While Kleiger’s Montagu juxtaposes masculine dominance, Neville’s Hester flips the script on masculine emotion.

To make Bill Martin’s story plausible, Bevan decides the body needs a letter from a girl he loves. It’s not the cocky Eton Boys-like agents who perfect the forged love letter, but rather Hester, a cryptic secretary. The show’s most stirring solo, “Dear Bill,” is reserved for Hester’s penmanship.

“You’re hearing and seeing a male-presenting figure sit in grief and loss for an extended period of time, without moving to violence, suicide or aggression,” Cumming said. “A lot of middle-aged men come to the show and often say, ‘I’ve never cried at a thing before, but I cried at that song.’ I think it’s because they don’t get to see men be sad.”

Neville, who uses he/they pronouns, sings the number as Hester, wearing a crisp white button-up and reading glasses with dangling pearls. He also doubles as the jubilant and flashy Bernard Spilsbury, who acquires an untraceable corpse for Bill. For the actor, playing both parts blurs the line between drama and comedy.

“I tend to be someone who makes a joke out of a lot of things. From that, there’s a lot of sadness in me as a person. Hester is an example of that,” Neville said. “Watching someone lift up the hood of the car for a second is really heartbreaking because we’ve accidentally done that, then gathered ourselves up and moved on.

“It’s very British, but it’s also very human.”

No bells and whistles required

Under a glimmering chandelier and behind red walls at the Royal Alexandra, the cast laughs at each other’s cheeky jokes. Other than Neville’s “Back to the Future” musical run, “Operation Mincemeat” marks the group’s first time performing in Toronto.

They collectively agree that American audiences are more boisterous than Canadian ones. (“The jokes that usually make the audience erupt with laughter feel more like a tame laughter … Then the jokes that get a little giggle in the U.S. feel like silence here,” Ramirez said.)

Regardless of how reactions shape the actors’ performances, Cumming hopes imagination is a part of the audience’s interpretation.

“It’s harking back to ultimately what theatre really is: Just a bunch of kids in the playground saying, ‘I’m going to be a cowboy, you’re going to be the tree,’” he said. “If you allow yourself to go with it, you rekindle that kind of childhood joy.

“You don’t need all the bells and whistles … Ultimately, the show is a few bodies on stage, moving a certain way, and throwing on a few different hats.”