Mickey Jo (0:00)

I feel I want to preface this entire video by saying I wish for nothing but the most extreme success for Operation Mincemeat. I want it to run forever in the West End. I want it to be hugely successful on Broadway. I want it to win the Tony Award for Best New Musical. This has always been an exceptional show that I really want to root for. However, in the last years since it arrived at the Fortune Theatre in the West End, it's been getting harder and harder to root for this show. And today I'm going to tell you why. Oh my God. Hey. Welcome back to my theatre themed YouTube channel. My name is Mickey Jo. I'm a professional theatre critic based here in the UK. But here on my theatre themed YouTube channel, I talk about theatre all around the world, which is appropriate because today it was announced that the Olivier Award winning British new musical Operation Mincemeat, currently playing at the Fortune Theatre in the West End, will officially be transferring to Broadway in 2025. It is going to be opening in the spring this season at Broadway's Golden Theatre, where Stereophonic, the Tony Award winning best play of last season, will shortly be concluding its run. Now this is not a total surprise because Operation Mincemeat has been orchestrating this pre Broadway marketing campaign and dispensing various surveys asking its audience whether they thought the show was too British for Broadway and how would be the most successful way to cast it. Which is just one of the many things we are going to be discussing in today's video. Because I am concerned as a huge, huge fan of the show, that they may be about to make a stupid mistake. And in fact I will go as far as to say they may have already made a few of those in the West End. But I'm saying all of this today in a video publicly out of the hope that it's not too late for those to be fixed and also out of the hope that the show may yet go on to be a huge success. But there are a couple of concerns now, as always, as well as sharing my own thoughts on here, which are of course just my opinion, I am deeply curious as to what you all think. Let me know in the comments section down below. Have you seen Operation Mincemeat in the West End? Are you a fan of the show? Has your relationship to it changed over the last year with some of the changes of how it's been produced, I guess in the West End? Are you a Broadway fan who already knew about this show? Are you looking forward to it? Let us know in the comments section. And if you enjoy today's video, make sure to subscribe to my theatre themed YouTube channel and then go find me on all the other social media platforms across the Internet for more thoughts, more content about a bunch of different shows. I am ickyjoetheater on Instagram, TikTok and the app formerly known as Twitter. I'm also on threads as a direct result of the app formerly known as Twitter. But for now, if you want to know what I think about Operation Mincemeat and you know, their Broadway viability and their ongoing West End success, I'm about to tell you. So if you know nothing whatsoever about this show Operation Mincemeat is this plucky new musical that began its life at the New Diorama Theatre as the collaborative creation of a group called Spit Lip Theatre, made up of four theatre makers, three of whom also were performers in the original West End cast, the other of whom is a musician, and they created the entire show collaboratively, book, music and lyrics as well as just like the whole ethos of the thing and Operation Mincemeat tells the true story of a World War II deception operation by British military intelligence which was devised in order to convince the the German army that the Allied forces were going to attempt to invade Sardinia rather than Sicily, causing the Germans to redeploy thousands of their troops to allow for a more peaceful occupation and help turn the tide of the war during the later stages of the Second World War. The same story is told in a film of the same name which also recently came out, Operation Mincemeat. I have not seen film, but I'm given to understand that they tell the same story, they feature the same characters, but have significantly different tones because that is more of a serious World War II film. And Operation Mincemeat is primarily a madcap comedy. It lives tonally somewhere between Mischief Theater, the group behind the Play that Goes Wrong and the Other Goes Wrong shows, and Starkid, honestly, but a very British kind of a star kid. You have performers on stage multi rolling as different characters putting on a bunch of different hats, running all over the place. It's very, very silly and zany and high energy, but there are these moments of blistering sincerity that pierce through that comedy layer. And it's the combination, I think of those two things, both how funny it is and then how surprisingly heartfelt and emotional it is that has really won audiences over throughout its lifetime. And this is the thing about Operation Mincemeat is the word of mouth has always been astonishing for as long as this show has existed, people have been going to see it and leaving the theater saying, oh my God, that's incredible. I need to tell 10 of my friends. And that was a key ingredient of its success. Now, when I first saw the show, it was after this run at the New Diorama, it was at Southwark Playhouse, I think it was in the smaller of the two spaces at the smaller of the two Southwark Playhouses that we now have. So still a very small off West End fringe space, whatever you want to call it. And I completely fell in love with the show. I thought it was brilliant. I thought it was some of the wittiest new musical writing. I thought it was completely original, even though it, you know, bears this tonal similarity that I suggested. I thought it was so British, I thought it was brilliant. I just loved it. And thereafter I watched them go from off West End venue to off west venue, just like creeping up in capacity, size, gradually getting bigger, but principally the same performers, the same production. And what I thought was happening was that they were having to keep doing these runs to try and get producers interested every time. In fact, later when the show was in the West End, the creators, Spit Lip Theatre, would speak at the UK Musical Theatre Conference where I was a guest. And they revealed that their producing partners, Avalon, came on board at the New Diorama but had this whole, I guess like five year plan that they envisioned for the show which involved all of those different smaller runs. They told Spit Lip that the show was not going to immediately be airlifted into the West End, but that they would have to forge this path between these different off West End venues to slowly and dedicatedly establish a viable word of mouth and help to build an audience for the show. Which is critical because in so many of these videos here on YouTube, especially when I talk about the successful viability of a show and its marketability, we address the fact that if a show does not have stars in the cast and if the show itself is not a name, I. E. Based on a film or a known piece of intellectual property, it is likely going to struggle also if it doesn't have well known songs like a jukebox musical, something completely original with unknown theatre maker performers like this was, was always going to be a tough sell. And the brilliant part of all of this is that plan worked. Eventually the Woman in Black, a long running play in the West End, closed at the Fortune Theatre, which is one of the smallest theaters in the West End, a great size for, you know, this new little show. That could to go into the West End, which is exactly what they did, and flourish. By this point, it had a small army of fans. People had spread the word about it. It already had a bunch of great reviews under its belt. In fact, it already had an award win under its belt. I think it was the Evening Standard Award for Best New Musical that the show had already won. And so, rather than beginning this uphill battle as it landed in the West End, it was arriving with some sense of momentum already. And it established quite quickly a really remarkable fandom called the Mincefluencers, who are a tremendously eager and organ group, and like any theater fandom, not without their occasional moment of drama. However, the things that that group has been able to achieve in their lifetime has been quite remarkable. They have bought out entire sections of the theater and had performances where like dozens of them turn up, all cosplaying different characters. Most impressively, they managed to find evidence of one of the characters depicted within the show. They managed to get in touch with MI5, quantify her achievements in the Second World War, some of which were unknown to her own surviving family members. And there is now a plaque in the Fortune Theatre commemorating her contribution to the war effort. It's. It's wonderful and it speaks to this brilliant show and the extent to which it inspires people. I'm telling you all of this so that you can understand the love people have for this and what a great show it is. If you take nothing else away from this video, I want you to take away that. If you are going to Broadway, if you're already in New York, I implore you to get tickets to see this show. It's brilliant, it's genius, it's fantastic, it's hilarious. And it's at this point in the video that you may be wondering why I have titled it this way and what the issue is. Well, the issues began to happen shortly after it arrived in the West End. Now, bear in mind, the cutoff for the Olivier Awards happens in February. So the change of season from one to the next is like mid February. And the Olivier Awards are. The nominations are announced in early March and the ceremony usually happens in early to mid April. Operation Mincemeat, I think, began pretty previews in the West End in March and opened in May. Certainly it opened in the late spring, early summer, which is one of the least advantageous times in terms of the Olivier Awards to open, because you have to keep up that momentum for an entire year and you spend the whole year with everything else Opening and possibly, you know, besting the enthusiasm that people had for your show. Like the little Big things came in and it was like, is it going to open to good enough reviews to take it away from Operation Mincemeat? Is this going to be good enough to take it away from Operation Mincemeat? And sure enough, nothing really was. Operation Mincemeat won the day and managed to win the Olivier Award for Best New Musical. I was there, I was jumping up and down in the Royal Albert Hall. I was so happy for them. But even by this point there were a few irregularities with the way the show was being produced. Not performed, not written, but produced. Because when Operation Mincemeat opened at the Fortune Theatre, they revealed this controversial pricing policy where every single seat in the theatre is the same price. Now if you haven't been inside this particular theatrical, that may not sound particularly controversial. And if it was somewhere like the other palace for Americans, somewhere like New World Stages, this might not be the biggest controversy. However, even though there is a very limited capacity in this space, it is still a three tier theatre. And not all of these seats were made equal. Some of them were made dreadfully. And I don't blame Operation Mincemeat nor its producers at Avalon for the construction of the Fortune Theatre. There are a great many of these theatres in the West End that are historic relics that shows just have to contend with and the very cosy discomfort of this building and the sight lines and a lot of other disadvantageous factors about certainly some of the rear seats, some of the seats in the most upper sections are not their fault. However, it's really kind of unconscionable to charge the same amount for one of those upper circle back row seats that probably would have been all of £10 at the woman in Black as you are for prime seats in the stalls that have a great unobstructed close proximity view of. And even that would have mattered less if all the tickets were a same affordable price. However, this is where it also gets a little bit more complicated and I haven't been following this as dedicatedly as many of the fans have. So there have been several updates as this pricing structure has changed, but with some changes since they originally opened. This is the current pricing policy at Operation Mincemeat in the West End. So like most shows they have eight performances a week on Monday nights at 7:30. Every seat in the house is £39.50, £40Americans. This is going to work out somewhere just above 50 doll I think. And this May sound like a great deal, but this is the cheapest that the show is getting before discounts at any point during its week, which means it has one of the highest, lowest ticket prices in the West End. Most other shows have a lower ticket price than $39.50. I think Hamilton might be another one where the lowest is $39.50. So it seems like, you know, it's a great deal. If you're getting one of those like premium best seats in the house for 39.50, that's a great deal. But does Operation Mincemeat, this still fairly small show that doesn't feature that many people on stage or in the band, and certainly isn't as expensive as many of the other really big musicals in town, deserving of the most expensive lowest tickets in the West End. Bear in mind they do not do anything like a to day takes rush. They don't do day tickets or rush tickets if you queue up at the theatre. The one sort of more accessible ticketing initiative that they have is an online ticket lottery that you can enter and it will tell every week whether or not you have won. And it's not that hard to win. Like I've won it a few times, a lot of people I know have won it at some point. And that gives you access to 25 pound tickets for like the next two weeks of performances across various performances. But that obviously is only helpful to the people who know about it and aren't looking to plan more than two weeks in advance. And you also can't guarantee that you're going to win the online ticket lottery. They have two shows on a Tuesday. The Tuesday 3pm Matinee goes up to £49.50 for every seat in the house. The Tuesday evening performance is then £59.50 for every seat in the house. And those prices will all stay the same from November 18th. But currently the Wednesday 730 is £69.50, the Thursday 730 is £79.50 and from November 18th both of those will then become £89.50 for every seat in the house. That is already the price of the Friday, Saturday and Sunday performances. Meaning from mid November onwards, if you want to see Operation Mintmeat in the West End and you don't want to wait and see if you might win the ticket lottery, five out of eight of the weekly performances cost you £90 per seat. If you're taking a family, if you're going with multiple people that obviously multiplies and it's not the most expensive ticket. It is still considerably cheaper than the likes of Cabaret or premium tickets at a bunch of West End shows. But it's the fact that you have these upper circle restricted view seats that are uncomfortable, that are very far away, that are not giving you an optimal visual or sound experience for £89.50, the same thing that people are paying downstairs. And in no other universe would anyone be able to charge £89.50 for a seat like that to a show like this. Now, an interview was given in the Stage defending this pricing policy and suggesting that, you know, it made better seats available for lower prices at certain performances. Their logic was that if they did a traditional pricing structure where on every performance the seats were the same price, but you had like the best seats at the highest tier and then like cascading down to lower prices for the seats all the way up top, which should still be way lower than £39.50 by the way, then that would make it more of a fair, even playing field for people to see the show. And those who couldn't afford the high ticket prices wouldn't constantly be relegated to the worst seats, however, they are constantly relegated to trying to win the lottery, not seeing the show at all, or only seeing those Monday performances, which, from what I remember, you have to enter a ballot in order to even get access to. And this is ignoring the fact that for a lot of people a Monday night performance in the West End is not going to be viable. There is a reason that that is the cheapest one and that that is like the quietest night of the week, because for most people it's easiest to go and see a show at the weekend. People have jobs. People who are traveling from around the country may not be able to get home after a Monday night performance in the West End. So it's no longer helpful to have a lower ticket price if they're having to pay for a hotel on top of that. And as it stands, more and more of these performances are moving up to that 89 pound 50 price bracket anyway. And that's not to accompany the show suddenly getting more expensive. They just want to make more money, possibly in anticipation of the show's Broadway run, which we're going to get to in a minute. The thing is, it may be honest that their intention is to actually make it possible for, you know, by everyone paying the same price people to see the show in better seats and not be relegated to those cheaper ones. If they can't afford to pay for those higher priced tickets. However, if they were to do a traditional theatre pricing structure, they just wouldn't make as much money as they currently are because 5, 8 of the performances are at £90 and they could not sell 5, 8 of the seats in that theatre at the highest price point. They just couldn't justify that. There is too much discrepancy between the experience you get from those different seats. Having sat in the front couple rows which are. It's a very high stage so they are slightly restricted. Having sat a few rows back in a lovely press seat that I was allocated when I reviewed the show last year, having sat in the dress circle on a ticket I bought on a lottery win, completely different experiences each time that should each be priced differently. And I have never even touched the upper circle because I've heard horror stories and this is the principal grievance that a lot of the fans have with the show because it's made it harder for fans to go back and see it. A lot of really dedicated fans want to go and see their favorite shows again and again and again. And by not to use a serious grown up word here, but gatekeeping these Monday night performances, they make it harder for those fans to go back and like get last minute tickets to go and see a fun combination of understudies, which is something that is very popular within the Operation Mincemeat fandom because they have alternate performers who go on on different nights of the week and have first covers and second covers. So a lot like six people get really excited when a performer debuts in a new track or when there's a particular combination of performers. There's Operation Mincemeat Bingo that you can play along with. Not created by the show of course, but created by the fans. And since the show is open for many of the fans, it has felt as though there has been this concerted effort to make it harder and harder for them to go back and see it and see it at short notice for an accessible price point. I have an additional grievance for the show and it has to do with casting. Now I recently went back on my birthday weekend because I love the show to see the replacement cast and I didn't get to see the wonderful Chloe Hart because she wasn't performing that evening. The only brand new member of the cast I got to see was Emily Barber, who has recently joined the show as Ewan Montague, taking over from Natasha Hodgson, one of the show's writers who originated the role. And the reason I didn't See any other new performance is because Clare Marie hall has stayed on in the role of Jean and others. Christian Andrews, who was like the alternate Hester and others has since been promoted to like the principal. Same with Sean Carey as Charles Cholmondeley. And I also saw Geri Allen and Holly Sumpton who have been alternates with the show since it began at the Fortune. And Emily has a discernibly different take on Ewan than Natasha does. It's a little more grounded in reality. It's not quite as farcically ridiculous or over the top. She doesn't get the same quantity of laughs with like the little asides and mannerisms that Natasha did. Natasha also had years to develop this character and co wrote the character. So that's kind of to be expected. And I'm not really here to tell you I think that one cast is better than the other. My issue is a lack of diversity and it is not an all white cast and it has never quite been an all white cast, but it has consistently been a predominantly white cast. And when you have the play that goes wrong down the street at the the Duchess Theatre evidencing that you can do exactly this same kind of style of show, this same kind of comedic tone with a very diverse cast, it kind of shows Operation Mincemeat up a little bit. And it was difficult to begrudge their casting when they were arriving in the West End as this plucky new musical predominantly made up of a lot of people who had developed it for years and written it and they weren't all white. But since then everyone else that they added to the cast has been. And there is also a lack of body diversity which is something I think we talk about less but ought to talk about much more in the industry. But the argument in theatre so often is that because shows are dance heavy that it precludes them from casting plus size performers or disabled performers, non able bodied performers. And that really isn't the case with Operation Mincemeat. To be fair. I don't know to what extent the backstage of that theatre is actually even wheelchair accessible as an example. Certainly I think the staging would have to be reconfigured because of the pace and all of the transitions. But it's, you know, it's something that they could consider. This is just a comedy musical show. These are not dance tracks and good humor and acting and singing like it's not Les Mis in terms of the vocal demands is not exclusive to white, largely thin and able bodied performers. At the same Time. They are only on their second cast in the West End and I have hope that as the show continues, we begin to see much more diversity reflected in their performance rosters. I could, I could easily give you a name of 10 great performers which would reflect a more diverse background who could go into the show right now. But that's not really what I've come on here to talk about today, because I am here to tell you about the show's Broadway plans. And I wish I could just be excited about this because Operation Mincemeat going to Broadway is this huge success story for this show that came from the fringes of London, from these theatre makers like this. Going to Broadway is huge and stratospheric and I can't even reckon the memory of me seeing the show at the Southwark Playhouse years ago pre Covid and the notion that it would be going to Broadway like that seems so impossibly wonderful. However, I'm a little bit nervous about it because I mentioned before the Fortune Theatre, one of the smallest in the West End. I'm going to tell you the actual capacity of the space now. This is the theatre that they are doing pretty well and selling out consistently. 432 seats. 400 and thirty two seats. I'm pretty sure per the Broadway regulations, that wouldn't even qualify as a Broadway house. But I don't remember that number offhand. What I can tell you is that the Golden Theatre, where the show is going to be playing on Broadway, as has recently been announced, has a capacity of 804seats. So not quite double, but still, by some factor, the largest theatre Operation Mincemeat will have ever played. I think the Hayes Theatre on Broadway is the smallest that has 597, so still a decent chunk of change, bigger than the Fortune. And when the show was discernibly readying for Broadway, they sent out a series of questionnaires. It's as yet kind of difficult to tell how many of these actually reached Americans and how many of them were simply scrutinized by the show's slightly peeved British fans. But one of the first questions that they asked was, is this show inherently too British for Broadway? And that's something I want to address a little bit here because I don't think that is the case. Years ago, Billy Elliot won the Tony Award over next to normal. Certainly many of the plays that we send over to Broadway are very British. I don't think Broadway has an issue with something of a different cultural background. However, I am struggling to Think of that many successful West End to Broadway transfers of witty, smart musicals. Because this is a very like, it's, it's silly and it's comedic, but it's very smart. It is very intelligent and fast paced and for the most part those kind of musicals, really smart, witty musicals, when written by Stephen Sondheim in the US first and then came over to the West End, become successful. I can't think of that many British witty musicals that have done well from the West End to Broadway. Certainly very intelligent British plays, sure, but musicals I'm struggling to think of as many in the last few decades. We've done very well in transferring great revivals of musicals. But some of the most successful British exports in the musical theatre realm have been epic, mega musicals. Not little multi rolling, five person witty ones. But Britishness I don't think is a problem. And I think the ongoing Off Broadway success of the Play that Goes Wrong, which began on Broadway and then transferred Off Broadway to New World Stages and continues to run in New York, speaks to the audience that Operation Mincemeat may hope to find. But would it find that audience by going Off Broadway first? And this is kind of my central thesis here because the show really forged this very smart path, like I told you, starting at the new diorama tiny theatre, the smaller space at the smaller Southwark Playhouse, tiny. Then I think it went next to the larger space, then to the Riverside Studios, then to the West End where it's still only playing a 432 seat theatre. This over years, over a space of like five years, I believe this very cautious and gradual approach, slowly building word of mouth, slowly building an audience. And yes, the pandemic slowed them down in the middle there. They wouldn't have necessarily planned to take that long. However, they very determinedly but cautiously moved in the direction of the West End. It boggles my mind to now be, I guess, emboldened by their own Olivier win to think that they can now play the biggest theatre the show has ever played in, almost twice the size of its current home, and go straight there in a country where they have no cultural capital and not much pre existing word of mouth. There are a few Americans who have come over here and seen Operation Mincemeat. It had a great write up in Variety, but that's only going to count for so much opening cold on Broadway when a great many people have no idea what your show is and you have a slightly off putting title. Just ask Urinetown how that'll get you. That seems insane to me. And that is basically the stupid mistake that I'm alluding to in this video. I don't think the way they cast it would matter if they went off Broadway first and deployed exactly the same tactic that they did here in the uk. And I don't think you're too big as a show because you want the Olivier to go off Broadway. And like, I don't think it matters whether that's embarrassing to be the first Olivier Award winning musical to go off Broadway. A lot of Olivier Award winning musicals these days simply don't go to Broadway at all. Standing at the sky's edge seems to be making no plans to go to Broadway. That's another one that was like, is it too British? A lot of Tony Award winning best musicals don't come over here either, so don't take it personally. But for this plucky small show, I do not understand why they aren't first trying to go off Broadway where they can build up a little bit of a press campaign. People can go and find out what the show is. And then when they arrive in New York at the golden six months a year down the line, people say, oh, I saw that downtown. It's hilarious, it's wonderful. I told all of my friends about it. Right now it doesn't have any of that. And for it to be a show where it's this cast of unknown British actors and the answer to that curiosity in New York is going to be, oh, well, it's the people who wrote it. It's this little company. It did really well in the uk. That style of a show almost makes more sense for off Broadway because that was kind of the cornerstone of it's Olivier's campaign. It was this little show that could and had forged this steady path and had come up from these small off West End origins on Broadway, it doesn't really look like that to a New York audience because it's just dropped into the middle of the theater district from nowhere. They're trying to portray it as this huge success and that's not really in keeping with the vibe and the ethos of the show. It has been a huge success, but that's not the character of the piece. It is still this little show that could and did, and that is the best way for Americans to get to know it. Now I have the press release here. I'm going to read you a few more details about this. They're calling the stunning true story of a scheme every bit as dicey, daring and ridiculous as opening a new musical on Broadway. This entire marketing campaign has been unusual to say the least. Not only have they been sending out these surveys, they did this online game. They engaged with US based content creators, which is smart. But they also seem to undermine themselves at every turn by distributing the results of these surveys that revealed small percentages of American audiences even cared about Olivier Award wins or star ratings, which were the show's biggest selling points. And the other conversation has been about casting, but we're going to get back to that. Performances begin Saturday, February 15, 2025. Opening night set for Thursday, March 20. It's opening at an opportune time on Broadway. It didn't do that in the West End. Fewer shows do that in the West End. Honestly, there is less of a focus on a good time to open for the awards on Broadway. There is very much a focus on that. And the cutoff for the Tony Awards is usually late April, so opening in late March. Good timing. 745 star reviews and counting. Which only means so much in a country where they don't really use star ratings like the New York Post does a star rating out of 4. Time Out New York does a star rating, but most of the outlets like the New York Times don't do star ratings anyway. They write that the extraordinary debut musical is written and composed by the comedy group Spit Lip, featuring David Cumming, Felix Hagen, Natasha Hodgson and Zoe Roberts, and casting for the Broadway premiere will be announced soon. More on that bear with me me. Tickets will be on sale beginning on Wednesday, November 20th, if anyone wants to buy tickets. And again, I really encourage you to go and see this show. Despite everything that I'm saying about the dubiousness of its production and the ambitiousness of its Broadway trajectory. It's a great show. I cannot state that enough. This is a thorough recommendation from me. It's a five star, brilliant piece of theatre. A fan presale will begin on Monday, November 18th and for more information you can visit operationbroadway.com now there is a statement here from Spit Lip the musical's writers and composers and original stars. If we had to name one single unifying influence for Operation Mincemeat, it would be the American musical comedy the Producers, Guys and Dolls. Wicked is Wicked a comedy. We'll leave that. Avenue Q, the Book of Mormon. We never dreamed we would even get to go see shows like these on Broadway, let alone open our show alongside them. Thank you to our fans and particularly those in the US for getting Operation Mincemeat here. If it gets hounded out of Broadway after one night, it will still be beyond our wildest dreams. Our producers, we'd imagine, would be less pleased. And of course, I'm not rooting for that to happen. Just reading that makes me so happy for these tremendous talents. I really want this to do hugely well for them. I just have some concerns now. In this press release they tell the story of the show's success. They say it began as a tiny and tiny budgeted production at London's new Diorama Theatre. The show quickly gained a devoted following, spurring sold out runs at venues including Southwark Playhouse and Riverside Studios. It premiered in the West End at the Fortune Theatre where it received rave reviews, continues to play to standing room only crowds, and has cultivated one of London's most fervent fan bases, affectionately dubbed mincefluencers. The Mincefluencers, who throughout the pre Broadway marketing campaign have been quick to point out every single time that a lyric has been misquoted by the show themselves, which is an unfortunate number of occasions. Hell hath little fury like a fandom. Wrong. Operation Mincemeat is produced on Broadway by Avalon in association with Spit Lip, Yada Yada Yada. And the headline news here is that this is being billed as a 16 week limited run, although they don't actually use that wording here in the press release. Where did I hear that? I'm pretty sure it was on the website. It is. It's here on operationbroadway.com 16 weeks only. Now this is interesting because another factor of the show's ongoing PR campaign in the uk, as well as saying that they are the most five star reviewed show in the history of shows since. Since the Greeks, I guess. Did the Greeks have star ratings? Not important. Not important. They keep extending. So it began as a limited run in the UK and they did this little extension, then another little extension and they're on something like their 10th extension. They have only been in the West End for like just over, I think like 18 months now. So for them to be on the their 10th extension does begin to feel a little bit ludicrous. And this I'm assuming is also going to be their plan on Broadway. They say in bold letters, 16 weeks only. But the investor packet for the show seems to indicate that they anticipate recouping costs at the 30 week mark. So that alone suggests they plan to run for at least twice that long. At what point does this begin to feel like misleading advertising? Like you are trying to create scarcity by telling your audience, telling potential ticket buyers they have to Buy within these first four months, it's only going to run for 16 weeks, only to have in the back of their minds that they were going to extend the whole time. And a lot of shows do this, but the wording, I think, has to be very careful for it not to be labelled false and misleading advertising. In any case, if they are successful, and we can hope that they are, and that they do magically find this audience very suddenly when they arrive on Broadway and they get beautiful reviews and they win awards and they win the Tony, get ready to hear about extension after extension after extension. Now, the final factor in all of that is the Broadway casting. And this is the other thing that has been heavily talked about on online surveys. They have asked the question, do you need a star to succeed on Broadway? And the problem here is that they're asking the fans. And when, you know, when you ask musical theatre fans, they want to see musical theatre performance. Fans of this show want to see the writers and the original cast of this show succeeding on Broadway. They want everyone to go over. They want the writers to go over. They want Claire and Jack, Jack Malone, who won a Olivier Award for his beautiful performance in the show. They want them all to be there on Broadway. That is always going to be their answer. But these aren't the people you need to be asking. You need to be asking the tourists from the Midwest, from around the world, who arrive on Broadway not knowing anything about these particular shows, but, you know, want to go and see something that they think is going to be great and they think is going to be worth the money. Funny. These are the people you need to hear from. I don't know how you survey those people other than going into Times Square and going down the line at the TKTS booth and asking them. And honestly, you don't need to put out surveys to see the current trends in theatre both in the West End and on Broadway. Now, they have managed to survive and thrive even in the West End without star casting, but they're a considerably smaller theater where they have been building up word of mouth, where they have a little bit more cultural capital. By that I mean there is more likelihood that people here will understand what that show is about beforehand. In New York, it's this slightly alienating British thing with a bunch of performers they certainly don't know. And we do still see a lot of Broadway ticket sales motivated by star casting. Charli D'Amelio has just been announced to be joining the ensemble of and Juliet Broadway shows will take a star wherever they can get one. And the problem that Operation Mincemeat has is it's not a very easy show to stunt cast. And Juliet, I think, is the easiest show in the world to stunt cast because it's frothy, it's light, it's poppy. They can put any number of pop stars into that show. Operation Mincemeat, if they are planning to stunt cast, is going to be looking for like Saturday Night Live alumni comedians. And what would be crucial then is that they would gel well with any of the British cast members going over. Because the cohesive nature of this five person ensemble is key to the show's success. Their artistic success at least. Interestingly, when Peter Pan Goes Wrong opened on Broadway, they turned to this pretty quickly and they brought in performers like Neil Patrick Harris to do little stints and they still didn't manage to run a huge amount of time at the Barrymore Theatre on Broadway. But they did this in the narrator role, which was an easy enough insert for a rotating guest star. Operation Mincemeat is going to struggle to do that. And truthfully, I hope it is the original cast who go over. I just think it's going to be a tall order for them to sell that theater. Which again brings me back to my question about. About Off Broadway. I don't know why so many shows are resistant to the idea of going off Broadway. Shows like how to Dance in Ohio, I think would have been much more successful. And not just that one, but I think would have been much more successful if they went off Broadway first. And Off Broadway is really thriving right now. Teeth was one of the most loved shows of the spring. One of the most loved shows on Broadway right now is oh Mary, which came from Off Broadway. Merrily. That Merrily revival came from off Broadway. And though it's a little late in the day for me to say it now, I think Operation Mint Spring Meet could have done far worse. But here is the final kicker, and that is to do with pricing. Because I spent so much time telling you about the West End prices, you have to imagine that when they open the Golden Theatre on Broadway, they are not going to try and make every seat in their house the same price. It is unfathomable to me that they will try and do that. They would just get eaten alive. There is no way in hell they would pull that off. That would just be completely ludicrous. It's a theatre that's twice the size. It would not be possible. Now Broadway ticket prices on average are higher than West End ticket prices. So I'm not saying it will necessarily be cheaper than the West End prices. However, if the same producers open the show on Broadway with a more traditional pricing structure, are the West End fans not going to ask why that isn't applicable to the London production? And further to that, most shows on Broadway have some kind of a rush policy where Tickets are usually $50 at the discretion of the box office and availability. You can queue up on the day of and when the box office opens, they will have some like $50 or cheaper tickets that you can buy for the performance of that day. And it's only the hugely successful shows that don't have any kind of a rush policy. Like Merrily We Roll along didn't have a rush policy, but Sunset has a rush policy. I'm pretty sure Romeo and Juliet with Kit Connor and Rachel Zegler has a rush policy. These are going to be very in demand tickets very soon. So you would assume Operation Mincemeat is going to have a rush policy. Meaning? Meaning you can fly from London to New York. Now that would obviously be expensive, but if you are willing to stand on the street, you can get cheaper tickets almost any day of the week for Operation Mincemeat on Broadway than in the West End. If this is the case, and that seems ludicrous, it's literally a reverse of the Hamilton situation. When Hamilton opened here and was considerably cheaper and Americans were saying they could fly over to London and see Hamilton for less than it would cost for them to see it in New York. And obviously the price of the flight from London to New York would skew that with Operation Mincemeat. However, the idea of cheaper tickets for the Broadway production still seems utterly baffling to me. Maybe the best thing for the London production is for it to move to a slightly bigger theatre like the Criterion, which by the way was used as a bunker in the Second World War and has this lovely vintage vibe inside, would be a lovely fit for the show. And then with a slightly larger capacity theater, maybe they could then go to a more traditional pricing structure. Maybe they could do some day tickets, some rush tickets. Just something just throw a little bone to the fans to re engage that fan community and make it possible for them to see the show again in London without having to spend a fortune to get into the fortune. That is pretty much all I have to say about this show. I want to reiterate, I encourage you to go and see this. If you are a New York theatre person and want to know if this is going to be good it's genius. It's brilliant, it's wonderful, it's hilarious, it's heartfelt belt. It's an extraordinary piece of theatre. I think it's one of the great musicals written in the last decade. I love it. I hope to be seeing it on Broadway. I hope it has huge success there. I just worry about the possibility of that. And I also think there are a whole host of things that they could improve in the West End in terms of guaranteeing the show the long life that it deserves to have. In any case, those are my thoughts about Operation Mincemeat. I'm very curious to hear what you think. Let me know in the comments section down below. And I hope that you are staying safe and that you have a stagey day. For 10 more seconds, I'm Mickey Jo Theatre. Oh, my God. Hey, thanks for watching. Have a stagey day. Subscribe.