Are Tickets Still Available for the ‘Best-Reviewed Show in West End History’ coming to Cardiff’s New Theatre?
IT HAS been described as the best-reviewed show in West End history, won the Olivier Award for Best New Musical and successfully crossed the Atlantic to Broadway. Now Operation Mincemeat is heading for Cardiff – but only for five days.
The musical arrives at the New Theatre Cardiff from Tuesday, September 15 to Saturday, September 19, telling the scarcely believable true story of one of the Second World War’s most audacious deception operations.
But is the Cardiff run sold out? Who is appearing in it? Why have the reviews been quite so extraordinary – and what is the remarkable Welsh connection at the heart of the real story?
WHEN IS OPERATION MINCEMEAT IN CARDIFF?
Operation Mincemeat plays at the New Theatre Cardiff from September 15–19, 2026.
It is therefore a particularly short visit for a production which has become one of the biggest theatrical success stories of recent years.
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IS OPERATION MINCEMEAT SOLD OUT IN CARDIFF?
Not completely – at least not at the time of writing.
The New Theatre is, however, describing the production as “Selling fast”, so anyone hoping to see it during its brief Cardiff stay would be wise to check availability sooner rather than later.
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WHAT IS OPERATION MINCEMEAT ACTUALLY ABOUT?
A dead body, false military documents and an elaborate invented identity.
And remarkably, it really happened.
In 1943 the Allies were planning an invasion of Sicily, but needed Nazi Germany to believe that the main attack would take place elsewhere.
British intelligence devised an extraordinary deception.
A dead man was dressed as a Royal Marines officer named Major William Martin and supplied with convincing personal possessions, correspondence and supposedly secret military papers suggesting that the Allies intended to invade Greece rather than Sicily.
His body was released into the sea off Spain in the hope that the documents would eventually reach German intelligence.
They did.
The deception worked, helping persuade the Germans to divert resources away from Sicily ahead of the Allied invasion.
It sounds like the plot of an especially far-fetched spy novel.
That may be appropriate – Ian Fleming, who would later create James Bond, was working in British naval intelligence at the time and forms part of the extraordinary world recreated in the musical.
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WHY IS IT CALLED THE BEST-REVIEWED SHOW IN WEST END HISTORY?
That was the claim on the billboard outside Cardiff’s New Theatre which initially caught our attention at Ewegottalove.
The Cardiff promotion says Operation Mincemeat accumulated 88 five-star reviews, leading to its description as the best-reviewed show in West End history.
It is worth clarifying that this does not mean somebody has produced a mathematical league table placing it above every production ever staged in London.
Rather, the claim reflects the exceptional number of five-star reviews the show has accumulated.
And the praise has certainly been remarkable.
The Guardian called its West End incarnation an “irrepressible wartime musical” and a triumph, praising its rapid comedy, ingenious ensemble work, gender-swapped characters and ability to find genuine emotion beneath the absurdity.
The show went on to win the 2024 Olivier Award for Best New Musical, while Jak Malone won the supporting actor award for his performance as Hester Leggatt.
Broadway followed, where Operation Mincemeat received four Tony nominations and Malone won another major prize – the 2025 Tony Award for Best Featured Actor in a Musical.
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WHY DO AUDIENCES LOVE IT SO MUCH?
Part of the appeal seems to be that Operation Mincemeat refuses to behave like a conventional wartime musical.
A small ensemble races through numerous characters, frequently crossing gender and social roles, while the score moves between broad comedy, satire, spy thriller and unexpectedly touching moments.
One song in particular, Dear Bill, has become associated with the emotional heart of the production.
The result is a show capable of making an audience laugh at the ridiculousness of wartime bureaucracy one moment and confronting the very human cost of war the next.
That mixture may explain why people who arrive expecting a comedy about an eccentric British spy operation so often leave talking about considerably more.
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WHO IS STARRING IN THE CARDIFF PRODUCTION?
The Cardiff company includes four performers who have already played acclaimed roles in the West End production:
Christian Andrews
Seán Carey
Charlotte Hanna-Williams
Holly Sumpton
They are joined by Jamie-Rose Monk, with Katy Ellis, Georgina Hagen, Jordan Pearson and Morgan Phillips completing the touring company.
Andrews provides another Ewegottalove connection: he is from south Wales and has previously performed Operation Mincemeat in the West End.
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WHAT IS OPERATION MINCEMEAT’S WELSH CONNECTION?
This is where the story becomes particularly fascinating.
The body used by British intelligence was that of Glyndwr Michael, a Welshman born in Aberbargoed on January 4, 1909.
Michael came from a mining family and spent part of his life in the Rhondda before eventually moving to London. By 1943 he was destitute and essentially homeless. He died there from poisoning at the age of 34.
His body was subsequently selected by British intelligence and transformed into the entirely fictional Major William Martin.
A complete identity was constructed around him – including letters, photographs and personal possessions – to convince anyone finding the body that Martin had been a genuine serving officer carrying highly confidential information.
Michael was eventually buried in Spain under the fictional name.
For decades his real identity remained secret.
Only in 1997 was an inscription added to his grave acknowledging that Glyndwr Michael had served as Major William Martin.
There is an even stranger Welsh detail.
The original inscription on the fictional Major Martin’s grave described him as the beloved son of parents from Cardiff, Wales.
So more than 80 years later, a musical telling the story of “the man who never was” arrives in the very city that formed part of the false identity created for him.
From a shoestring fringe production to the West End, Broadway and now Cardiff, Operation Mincemeat has enjoyed a journey almost as unlikely as the wartime plot that inspired it.
And for Welsh audiences there is an additional reason to look beyond the laughs and five-star reviews.
Behind Major William Martin – the fictional officer who helped fool Hitler – was Glyndwr Michael, a real Welshman from Aberbargoed whose unlikely place in history was kept secret for more than half a century.
Sometimes truth really is stranger than theatre.