PJ Grisar — Theater Critic

Director Nicholas Hytner has staged a boxing match for today’s discourse, without changing a line from a pre-Oct. 7 script. What makes the work sing is its refusal to resort to caricature, humanizing Dahl through his fiancée Liccy Crossland (Rachael Stirling), the tragedies of his dead daughter and disabled son and, yes, his genuine concern and justified anguish for the Lebanese and Palestinians, particularly the children.

While the story has been told before, perhaps most notably in the 2020 film Resistance with Jesse Eisenberg, Slater and Pailet were right to realize its inherent stage potential. It’s realized to a point, though their approach at times leans into broad comedy that misunderstands the sensibilities of its subject.

Despite the title, the play, directed by Alexander Harrington, is not a courtroom drama. It begins in 1924 in Königsberg, with Litten’s law professor father, Friedrich (Stan Buturla), discussing his son’s career prospects and handily alluding to the family’s Protestant conversion. Hans (Daniel Yaiullo) is convinced to pursue law, not as a calling, but as a kind of default — tempted, perhaps, by Friedrich’s sunny view of the profession.

With jazzy ear-worms and a poignant showstopper in which MI5 secretary Hester Legatt (Jak Malone) dictates a letter to the agency’s fictive serviceman, Mincemeat is supremely entertaining. The ensemble is indefatigable, the stagecraft is inventive and the slapstick sublime. One can see why it has a fanatical following across the pond.

The triumph of this iteration is how it anticipates its audience, teasing them with frothy liberation before making them gasp at Nazi armbands and shattered windows. As the Emcee oversees, or even appears at times to orchestrate, these national contradictions, it’s hard not to feel queasy at the dissonance. Particularly, I’d imagine, if you paid the upcharge for a stage-side meal. When the drumroll closes the show, a new aesthetic takes hold, complete in its muted menace. Dramatic irony is the play’s engine; we know there’s no changing the outcome. But when we sit pretty at the Kit Kat Club — tipsy, titillated, terrified — it’s not too late for us.