King’s Theatre, Edinburgh
Five stars
War stories come in many guises. Telling them in the form of musical theatre is a far from unheard of proposition, and has paid serious dividends for the SplitLip company in their multi award winning show that tells the stranger than fiction tale of one of World War Two’s most complex pieces of espionage, deception and military derring-do. This involved co-opting the corpse of an unknown vagrant, planting them with false documents regarding the allies next move and dumping the body off the coast of Spain where it fell into the about to be duped hands of the Germans.
SplitLips’ ingenious confection takes a story already long immortalised in print and on screen and translates it into a jolley-hockeysticks fusion of cabaret style show tunes and slickly conceived comic routines. These combine in Robert Hastie’s production to tell a story that takes in MI5 skulduggery, a bit part for a pre James Bond Ian Fleming, and one man’s curiously expert knowledge concerning the biological workings of a newt. The fact that all this is done with just five actors who double up in a multitude of roles in a show that began life in the 80-seat New Diorama Theatre before going on to conquer the world demonstrates the power of fringe theatre with unabashed glee.
As Holly Sumpton’s conniving agent Ewen Montagu co-opts Seán Carey’s myopic ideas man Charles Cholmondeley into his scheming, Christian Andrews’ senior secretary Hester Leggatt and Charlotte Hanna-Williams’ wannabe heroine Jean Leslie also jump aboard. This doesn’t always endear them to their commander, Johnny Bevan, played by Jamie-Rose Monk, who tries in vain to put a block on the mission.
Written and composed by David Cumming, Felix Hagan, Natasha Hodgson, and Zoë Roberts, for all the well-drilled knockabout, there is an infinitely more serious side at play that looks at ethics, institutionalised misogyny and who receives the credit for such enterprises (spoiler alert, it’s not the women who do the leg-work). While the show’s wilful cross-sex casting suggests everyone is in disguise, the elephant in the room comes in the form of the body itself, the identity of which is finally revealed as a Welsh émigré called Glyndwr Michael. Pulsed along by Jenny Arnold’s zippy choreography set to a live four piece band led by keyboardist Sam Sommerfeld, the end result is an irresistibly heroic display of ensemble fun and games.
The Herald, November 4th 2026
ends
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