Meticulous performances, choreography, design, and song make this forgotten World War Two operation into an unmissable musical that leaves you educated and highly entertained.

This plucky little show has been steadily growing its audience and honing its perfect balance of organised chaos to present a masterful example of the modern musical. With appeal for both young and old with deadpan jokes and decade-crossing references, it's Hamilton meets Noel Coward, telling the story of one of the government's more inventive WW2 initiatives. 

Called the titular Operation Mincemeat, the scheme, cooked up by MI5 agents; showman Eton boy Ewan Montegue and neurotic scientist Charles Chumley, (here with aid from secretaries Hester and Jean), saw the allies attempt an audacious move. To fool the Germans into receiving 'Top Secret' plans about the Army's movements, which led Hitler to pull his troops from Sicily and allow the British to access occupied Italy, thus contributing to the eventual Allied victory. 

The method? Take one spuriously acquired dead body from London, disguise him as a heroic shot-down British Airforce pilot, then eject him from a submarine off the coast of Spain, allow him to be found adrift with a convenient cache of hush-hush plans - then hope very dearly that the Hun take the bait.

The fact that the odds of this working were so low and dependent on a planetary alignment worthy of a rainbow meteor shower, evidences a can-do British Spirit that is mirrored by the five actors who play out the multitudes of personnel that pulled it off. 

From the remarkable chemistry of their main roles as MI5's finest to the clownery of a bent Coroner, a bumbling and 'bafflingly sweaty' Brit diplomat in Spain, and a host of genuinely moving submariners, they weave and bob, never missing a beat, filling the scene with jokes, or pathos, or both.

As an ensemble, they are diverting and virtuosic, solo just as watchable, with magnetic performances from Natasha Hodgson as Montegue and Jak Malone as Hester. Each displays an uncanny ability to embody a character with the smallest of gestures, from Hodgson's languid take on the classic British public school boy turned hero, to Malone's lightly pulling on their sleeves to become long-suffering office manager Hester, they add a believability that wins you over in this show about an unbelievable event.

With a frenetic soundtrack, the whole works effectively, plumb Lin Manuelesque tongue twisters meld with anthemic pop, with a few touching ballads and some old-school showbiz glitz to finish it off. It works incredibly well in the context of the show paired with top-notch sound, lighting, and production design, each once again meticulously realised with talent and great care. 

While it might sound mad to say that this show about an 80+-year-old story displays the very best of the contemporary British theatre scene, that's just what Operation Mincemeat does, offering a theatrically innovative, riotous, genuinely heartfelt, completely hilarious well-spent evening of escapism - a mighty masterpiece, long may it run!