…a brilliantly planned and superbly executed breathtakingly complex and immensely successful endeavor, all arduously constructed around a rotting lifeless hulk.
In the case of the musical, the rotting lifeless hulk is the mindless frivolity with which the real-life WWII events and individuals are travestied for a comic romp. Mind you, I’m all in favor of humorous modern retellings of history, I enjoyed Hamilton, but I felt that here it just did not work effectively.
The Ian Fleming jokes were funny because Fleming is already something of a parody cartoon figure in popular consciousness. Trying to apply the same treatment to the other historical MI5ers just felt rather cringe. (How’s it land once you know that the real-life Ewen Montagu was Jewish, for instance?)
And the couple moments of easy sentimentality, about the faked love letter and about the dead pauper (whose posthumous incarnation as a nonexistent British officer does NOT count as “service”, sorry), felt opportunistic and over-milked.
And that was before it all went luvvie at the end. Showbiz people just have to make it all about showbiz, don’t they?
Anyway, I realize that this hot take on a widely acclaimed Tony contender (which, I repeat, was brilliantly accomplished by an absolutely superb ensemble cast) is likely to be very much a minority opinion, so demolish at will.