Up as One: Meet the Tony-Nominated Team Behind Operation Mincemeat; Plus, an Exclusive Performance of 'Dear Bill' from Jak Malone

How do four minds come together to write one musical? If you ask David Cumming, Felix Hagan, Natasha Hodgson and Zoë Roberts—the quartet of musical theater Avengers that go by the name SpitLip—you'll get four different answers. But they'll all amount to about the same: "Slowly." "Torturously." "Horribly." "Through legal teams."

Operation Mincemeat, in all its agony of writing by committee, is the new exemplar of scrappy, grassroots theater. Based on the real-life World War II MI5 deception operation, and directed by Robert Hastie, the musical has worked its way from small London venues, to the West End where it won the Olivier for Best New Musical, and now to Broadway where it's nominated for four Tony Awards, including nominations for its book, score and the big prize, Best Musical. 

"For nearly a decade, we've been pouring every single atom of our brains into this thing," says Hagan, the lone member of SpitLip who does not also take the John Golden stage every night (Claire-Marie Hall and Tony nominee Jak Malone round out the cast). "When you stirred up a kind of musical color for the express intention of engendering one particular emotion, and then you see it be cast out into the crowd and you see it blossom amongst people, you feel like you're surfing on this thing that we're all doing together. It's really kind of exhilarating." 

Hear more from the members of SpitLip, including some samples from their Tony-nominated score, in the full Broadway Show interview with Broadway.com Managing Editor Beth Stevens. 

You can also see Jak Malone deliver his Tony-nominated performance of the ballad "Dear Bill" in the exclusive video below.