After garnering 74 five-star reviews in London’s West End, Operation Mincemeat has exploded onto Broadway with critical acclaim. This Olivier Award-winning musical comedy, created by the writer-performer quartet SpitLip, transforms the stranger-than-fiction WWII deception operation—involving a dead body, fabricated documents, and surprisingly, Ian Fleming—into theatrical gold. Now extended through February 2026, audiences are flocking to witness this genre-defying masterpiece that seamlessly blends numerous musical styles, bringing madcap energy to a tale that somehow manages to be both hilarious and heartfelt.
We sat down with David Cumming, co-writer and OG star playing Charles Cholmondeley & Others, to discuss the show’s journey from cult favorite to international phenomenon, his approach to portraying the brilliantly awkward intelligence officer, and the creative process behind Operation Mincemeat. Don’t miss our upcoming conversations with two more creative visionaries behind this runaway hit in the next installments of our exclusive three-part series!
Chloe Yang (CY): You’ve recently made the leap from the West End to Broadway. What have you been up to since arriving in New York?
David Cumming (DC): Yesterday, I had lunch, and then a vocal session with my voice teacher. We went to MISCAST25 at night. It’s like a cabaret where big stars perform songs that they would never get a chance to do because they’re gender-swapped or just not their casting type, which is fun. We ended up at the Cabaret after-party for Orville Peck and Eva Noblezada’s first night. I’ve never been to that before, so it was exciting getting to meet the Broadway community.
CY: Is this your first extended stay in New York, or have you spent time here before?
DC: I visited very briefly when I was 11 for four days with my family. Then we did a workshop at a writers’ retreat in upstate New York back in 2019, and on the way back, we spent three days in Manhattan. So I’ve only spent about seven days here total before picking up my suitcases and moving here for an unspecified amount of time.
CY: Your Broadway debut outfit was quite striking. Can you tell us about your fashion choices and style?
DC: It was my stylist, Ayumi Perry. I sent a bunch of images to her. The whole vibe was that I wanted to look like the beloved Prince Regent of a country, who’s refusing to sire an heir. She brought lots of stuff, but then she also had this Balenciaga top. I put it on and it was just so structural. Normally I would want to wear color, but I just couldn’t not wear it. It was streets ahead of anything else there. You only get one Broadway debut, so I needed to hit it hard.
CY: If you were to start your own fashion line, what would be your focus?
DC: I would want it to be a menswear collection that is definitively not black and white, but colorful, allowing men to not be afraid of wearing colors. Something with a masculine edge, but with a softness or brightness that allows them to explore. I think it’s really sad that most men don’t feel like they can express themselves through fashion because it’s basically seen as “gay” to do that. So I’d start with cool suit vibes and high-waist trousers, because low-rise is not the way for us.
CY: Let’s talk about Operation Mincemeat. What creative liberties did you take with Charles Cholmondeley’s character, and how did you honor his historical significance?
DC: We’ve taken quite a few creative liberties in his oddball nature, but that was based on historical facts. He was very tall, described as like a “flightless, myopic bird.” He’d often walk around the room when stressed, flapping his arms and pacing, which is quite odd behavior—almost like he might be on the spectrum. We never explicitly wrote him that way, but he’s been recognized by the neurodivergent community, with people saying, “We see ourselves in this character.”
The song “Dead in the Water” captures that feeling of “Why can’t I be the thing that I’m meant to be?” and has become a queer anthem, a neurodiverse anthem, and a trans anthem. None of that was intentional; it was simply a great metaphor for a guy obsessed with insects to sing about. But as we performed it, we realized it had more layers than we thought.
Cholmondeley was a very moral man—not in it for fame—which is different from Montagu. He disappeared from history, after telling Montagu not to mention his name in the latter’s book. History tells us he went to the Middle East after the war, and that’s the last we hear of him.
CY: The show seems to play up the contrast between Cholmondeley and Montagu. How did you approach this relationship?
DC: They’re very much foils. They each have what the other needs. Montagu has all the confidence and none of the rigor or brains. He’s got charisma and knows how to work a room. He’s smart but not necessarily clever-clever. Cholmondeley has all the brains and none of the ability to actually push an idea through—none of the confidence.
The way I see the show, Montagu hosts it—he’s there winking at the audience, aware he’s in a musical. Whenever Montagu walks off stage, he thinks the camera goes with him, but the audience stays with Cholmondeley. So Montagu is hosting this piece of theater, but you’re seeing it through Cholmondeley’s eyes. That’s how we share that space.
CY: One of the show’s standout moments is “Dead in the Water.“ Cholmondeley sings “I wish I was a maggot,” which is unexpected. How do audiences react to this surprising twist?
DC: I think a lot of people still don’t know what’s coming. You’re set up for a classic “I Want” song, and it is that, but the comedy lands better the more Cholmondeley truly believes he wants to be a maggot, and the less he tries to make it funny. A maggot is always going to become a fly—there’s no two ways about it—but a man can’t automatically become a hero. So the song follows all the conventions, but the comedic turn is that the things he wants are what a normal person wouldn’t want, yet it still makes perfect sense by the end.
CY: Speaking of the music, could you tell us about how SpitLip worked together?
DC: It’s all a big collaboration. There’s sort of a sliding scale of music to lyrics to text, and we all sit at different points on that for every different song/scene. Natasha Hodgson, Zoë Roberts, Felix Hagan, and I would all sit down together and agree on what the essence of a song or scene needed to be, and then all go away and have a go at writing it. After that, we’d all bring our work to the next session and smash our ideas together. It’s a very inefficient process but we think it makes for stronger work in the end.
CY: There’s a memorable line in “Dear Bill” about a greyhound. What’s the story behind that?
DC: The greyhound line is from me. I started to build that song, and a dog is mentioned in the original letter in history. I think I’d forgotten that, or it sat in me unconsciously. I remember sitting in my kitchen at the time, looking out into the garden which had roses in it, and I was plagued by the next-door neighbor’s dog that kept jumping over the fence and playing with the roses. So I asked myself, “If I were writing a letter today to someone across the sea, what would I write about?” That came from my literal, actual garden and my literal, actual roses.
CY: You’ve worked on the beatbox musical Frankenstein: How to Make a Monster and have experience with electronic music. Did those influences appear in Operation Mincemeat?
DC: It’s all a big mix. I can’t beatbox myself, but I worked with beatboxers and created songs for them, so I’m attuned to that sound. When writing, I’d say “the beat needs to be more like this” and do a kind of beatboxing, though I can’t really do it properly.
We were all keen from the outset that the show didn’t sound like the 1940s all the time. We didn’t want it to feel like history—we wanted it to feel as modern as possible.
The two big moments of electronic music are “Das Übermensch” and “Just for Tonight.” For “Das Übermensch,” we wanted it to sound sonically different because it’s the only time we see the Nazis. We never wanted them to be characters that talk or get humanized. We were thinking about how Nazi ideology was very popular in the UK too—this “exciting” future ideology of technocracy. We thought, “What’s that sound?” and we said, “It’s K-pop,” this music from Korea that’s so amazing with perfect choreography—something we don’t have in the West. So we made it a K-pop techno number. Also, the promises of the far right are just as true and deep as the lyrics of a boy band song. A boy band will profess to love you—they don’t, they just want your money. So that was the marriage of that music with the ideology.
“Just For Tonight” was one of the hardest songs to write, but we were keen to transfer into a modern club sound when the boys went out for a night. That’s all my programming and beats—the techno rave and the Soca beat. So it’s a mix of my stuff, and I also make rap music.
CY: I saw you recently quoting “Let Me Die in Velvet,” the original Act I finale, in an Instagram post. Why didn’t that song make it into the final show?
DC: It’s a great song, but it just wasn’t right to have a random character who wasn’t part of the main story at the end of Act I. At that point, you want to be hearing from your main characters emotionally before the intermission. In “Let Me Die in Velvet,” Montagu and Cholmondeley disappeared because they were watching the cabaret. Instead, we decided it needed to be the boys out on the town, going to different clubs, and becoming this big party.
CY: Have you had a chance to explore New York’s club scene yet? Any favorite experiences?
DC: I haven’t really been out in New York yet. I went to MAYHEM: The Album Release Rave at The Brooklyn Monarch a few weeks ago. That’s the only clubbing experience I’ve had here. I’m going to BATTLE HYMN in a couple of weeks, which should be fun. I’m really excited about trying to get to a big Berlin warehouse-style party at some point. I’m from the East London queer rave scene, so the equivalent here is probably in Brooklyn.
CY: Let’s finish with some fun questions. If you had to pick a spirit animal, what would it be?
DC: My spirit animal would be an otter. I like otters—they’re just cute little guys who hang out.
CY: What’s your favorite lyric from Operation Mincemeat?
DC: There’s a verse from “Just for Tonight”: “You’re too full of brains a plenty / For your glass to feel half empty / So let’s get another bottle / Fill the damn thing to the brim!” That’s a wonderful encapsulation of enjoying life—it’s a great metaphor.
CY: Who would be your dream collaborator for a future musical project?
DC: I love the work of Laurence O’Keefe. The team that made Legally Blonde would be great to work with because they seem really funny and fun. Lin-Manuel Miranda, obviously. Or Björk—I’d write a musical with Björk. It would be a really weird, electronica, immersive show where somehow you’re Björk and somehow you’re like a fly. A really weird experience, but beautiful.
I think there’s a real gap in electronic musical theater. I’ve always wanted to capture the vibe of a rave in a musical. Frankenstein was a bit like that, but I want to make something all electronic.
CY: I saw your recent post about balance and the sacrifices of a traveling artist’s life. What advice would you give to young artists trying to do it all?
DC: My advice to young artists trying to do it all is: don’t try to do it all. Your craft is iterative—each time you make something, you’re getting better at the process. You need to be okay with leaving things and saying, “That bit’s done,” even if it’s not perfect in your mind. Obsessing over making one thing perfect forever is not an artistic practice, it’s obsession. Operation Mincemeat isn’t perfect, but we were not going to keep tinkering with it.
Make the art that you aren’t seeing, and don’t be afraid to back it. Don’t expect to have everything all at once, and learn from yourself. Make what you’re not seeing.
Get your tickets for Operation Mincemeat HERE
