Operation Mincemeat

I felt like I was in back-to-back meetings all day. At the end of last week, an issue came up with some of the automation my team has been building. It might be a temporary glitch with a data import, so I re-tested today. It didn't work. It needs some engineering support. Hopefully, the fix will be applied tomorrow, but it may delay the roll-out everybody wants. I spoke to the operations team, who seemed relaxed about my (slightly) vague deployment plan.

The end of the day was a bit of a rush. I had a list of tasks I wanted to get logged so I wouldn't forget, and we needed to leave as we were heading to the theatre. We also wanted to eat before we left. And then we discovered trains into Waterloo were severely disrupted due to an incident on the line near New Malden.

Luckily, I'd defrosted a vegetable chilli, which made dinner preparations fast. As we left, I noticed a queue at the bus stop that indicated the bus to South Wimbledon that I thought we'd missed was running a minute or two late. As a result of that, and very prompt connections on the Northern Line, we were earlier than expected. We took time to look at the "Little Cloud World" at Covent Garden before heading to the Fortune Theatre to see 'Operation Mincemeat'.

I convinced myself that I had never been to the Fortune Theatre before. PY remembered one occasion, and when consulting diaries, we found we've been (at least) twice. A reminder that writing a journal of sorts is useful.

Despite the comedic presentation, Operation Mincemeat turns out to have been a genuine Second World War mission to disguise the Allied invasion of Sicily in 1943. The walls of the theatre had a link to a quiz about the operation. We took it while waiting for the performance to start, scoring three out of nine, as everything about the story was new to me.

It's an Olivier award-winning musical where every character is played by one of five people. They're swift with changes between characters and scenes; there's a lot of physical comedy and joyous musical numbers. While some songs have the sound of wartime music (albeit on modern instruments), there are plenty of contemporary sounds. It is well orchestrated.

Any role is played by any gender, which adds to both the comedy and the more serious messages. The ladies of the typing pool are intelligent, suspecting they will be the unsung heroes, while the male MI5 officers are full of arrogance and swagger.

It mixes into a remarkable evening.

Many of the shows I have seen recently have been very well produced. Most get a standing ovation. Sometimes, I think it's unwarranted. Standing should be reserved for the exceptional. With this, I'd passed my wine glass to PY to store safely during one of the final numbers, as I knew I'd be on my feet to applaud the show and, especially, the outstanding performances.

We got our tickets on the Monday ballot, which kept the price low and made availability fairer. It was an excellent way to get in and see the show. Recommended.