Operation Mincemeat - New Diorama/SWP/Riverside/Fortune

Is the lottery still an easy win? I remember signing up months ago with my partner and we both got it on the first try (but haven't bought it as we were only testing). Now I'm wondering, how to repeat that success when we actually want to come in a month 😅 If you have any tips, please share!

Not particularly easy, as when you enter once, you're in it for good so there's now a lot more people in it. Email addresses that are on their first drawing definitely have a much better chance of winning, though

Is the winning link connected to the email? I wonder if a friend with a new email can enter and in case of a win, share a link with me so I could buy them.

Yep, you and your friends can sign up on your various email addresses. The links aren't tied to a certain person, just each link can only be used once, and only as long as lottery seats are still available. Winning links also get passed around between fans.

I honestly think the 'radical transparency' approach to producing a West End / Broadway show could 10000% work and be VERY interesting, especially if it was done sort of documentary/true BTS style.

The issue is that is seems so forced and cringe, especially with trying to get specific reactions.

I've seen this show six times. I loved the original cast. I'd love to see some of them move to Broadway. I ALSO think several of the original cast are not cut out for a Broadway audience, vocals wise. I would support stunt casting. I would also strongly, strongly support bringing in a new director to freshen it. Whether it was the director or a resident director that worked with the West End Cast 2, they didn't do a great job. Lots of jokes that used to hit with OGs are delivered flat now. They're all very talented but I'm seeing a real lack of experienced leadership both creatively and producing wise.

I went from telling everyone about this, seeing it multiple times over several months, to literally being sort of meh about it. And it's because of decisions made at the top.

That isn't what is going on here, though. They are not genuinely being transparent, they are trying to manipulate people into being very vocal about things on social media in order to provide them with more publicity. As has been said, the Broadway run is already planned. They know they're taking the original cast.

I also think this show absolutely needs the original cast to work best on Broadway. Their vocals are far from bad and their chemistry and comic ability are unmatched, as seen by the second cast in the West End. Stunt casting would absolutely destroy this - I can't believe they could find a big enough name for it to be worth it who also has the necessarily skills in character acting to pull off any of the characters.

I don't think they could afford him but Daniel Radcliffe as Chumley I think would be great. There are folks out there with proper direction could do it. 

Some interesting detail in the Broadway Journal email, hope it's ok to post the whole thing...

‘OPERATION MINCEMEAT’ TARGETS GOLDEN THEATRE
by Philip Boroff

EXCLUSIVE: Producers of Operation Mincemeat are raising at least $11.5 million to transfer the critically acclaimed, Olivier Award-winning musical to Broadway, according to financial documents. People familiar with the show said the plan is to open at the Golden Theatre early next year as part of the current, 2024/25, season.

The Golden is home to Stereophonic -- the Tony Award-winning play about a fractious rock band making an album -- which recently “extended by popular demand for a final time” to Jan. 12, 2025.

Created by four writer-performers, three of whom met as students at the University of Warwick, Mincemeat is based on an absurd, real-life World War II British intelligence scheme: outfitting a corpse as a Royal Marine with phony documents to dupe the Nazis about an upcoming Allied invasion.

Notwithstanding industry concerns that the new musical may be “too British” to conquer Broadway, the comedy charmed some high-profile stateside reviewers. Peter Marks, formerly chief drama critic of the Washington Post, called it the funniest show in London. The New Yorker‘s Helen Shaw wrote that “Mincemeat presents itself as pure up-from-the-Fringe wackadoodle merriment…. with silliness and with lickety-split lyrics in a Lin-Manuel Miranda-esque mode…All the time, though, it’s moving its key emotional artillery into line.”

One need not work for MI5 to recognize the challenge of opening an unfamiliar title on Broadway without an initial, attention-getting run off-Broadway or at a nonprofit theater. While the 800-seat Golden Theatre is one of Broadway’s smaller houses, it has nearly twice the capacity of London’s Fortune Theatre, where Mincemeat opened in May 2023 after four years of development at tiny venues.

At the Olivier Awards, Mincemeat author and actor Zoë Roberts thanked “our army of supporters who got us all the way to the West End.”

To achieve just 75 percent of its gross potential at the Golden and recoup its $11.5 million minimum capitalization within a year, Mincemeat tickets must average about $146. (I calculated that from a Mincemeat recoupment chart for an unnamed theater with 802 seats, which is the capacity of the Golden.) Only Hamilton, McNeal with Robert Downey Jr., Oh, Mary! and The Outsiders command a higher average price. (Cabaret did as well — until movie star Eddie Redmayne left the cast Sept. 14.)

Mincemeat will arrive after having set an unusual precedent. At the Fortune Theatre, every ticket for each performance is priced the same, from the equivalent of $53 on Mondays to $120 on weekends. The show has said it was produced for just $3 million in London.

Mincemeat producer Jon Thoday told The Stage that one-price-fits-all makes the best seats widely accessible, as long as theatergoers go early in the week. Thoday, whose company, Avalon, produces television and live comedy, criticized pricing “where you go and sit in the stalls and one seat is priced at X, and the other one next to it is priced at Y. I think that’s bollocks.”

No word on whether Thoday will pursue flat pricing at the Shubert-owned Golden.

With a maximum capitalization of $14.5 million, Mincemeat isn’t expensive by current Broadway standards. According to Securities and Exchange Commission filings for this season, Maybe Happy Ending is being capitalized for as much as $18.25 million, Buena Vista Social Club is at $17 million, Tammy Faye is $25 million, Swept Away is $14.5 million, and the not-yet-announced Just in Time, starring Jonathan Groff as Bobby Darin, is raising $12.5 million.

Stereophonic — which is the subject of a New Yorker story by Michael Schulman about similarities with a memoir by a Fleetwood Mac engineer — has been selling particularly well since it won five Tonys in June. A person familiar with the production said that by November, it’s expected to recoup its capitalization — $4.8 million, according to an SEC filing. That’s before accounting for New York’s theatrical production tax credit.

Should its strong sales continue, Stereophonic‘s Broadway profits could be sizable, an encouraging sign for unconventional commercial theater without stars.

There is no plan to stunt cast this. It's literally all a marketing plot to drum up outrage.

Yay, I won the ballot apparently... And am now in a queue of 1300 other lucky ballot winners to book seats between January and March - the prices had better be good otherwise this might feel like a marketing gimmick...

Prices are the same as always. They've just put all Monday, Tuesday and Saturday evening shows behind that ballot, indeed for a marketing gimmick.

I didn't. Not that I wanted to.