Why on Earth Have I Seen the Same Broadway Show 13 Times? An Investigation.

A woman who had seen the show 12 times told me (wearing my same sweatshirt) that she’d been going to the theater and would enjoy other shows but that nothing would stick. When she finally saw “Mincemeat,” which she attended along with a friend who won a ticket lottery, she left the theater and couldn’t stop singing its “tight harmonies” and “earworm after earworm.” It reminded her of how much she loved musical theater in the first place, but even more, she was blown away by how kind the cast is at the stage door, how eager they are to talk, how charismatic they are onstage.

Another woman, a theater major, was seeing the show also for the 12th time with her mother the night I spoke with her. They saw it in London, then were there on the first night of previews in New York, when hundreds of British Mincefluencers made the trip and surprised the cast after the show by singing “Sail On, Boys,” the sea shanty that takes on ever-greatening poignancy as the show goes on. She told me that she’s autistic, and one of the many things she loves about the show is her assessment of Charles as autistic, and maybe even Jean, too. To have these people who have written such a loving representation of her be so nice and engaging at the stage door — well, in the end it feels more like friendship.

Still another Mincefluencer saw it for the first time the night I did that panel discussion, then went back with her son as soon as they could. She found it so clever and thoughtful, and she loves the way the understudies are treated like true members of the cast. In the estimated 100 times she has listened to the album, she keeps finding new lines and new ideas.

And that’s great, but she has also seen “Into the Woods” six or seven times, and the woman in the sweatshirt saw “Les Misérables” 25 times (and the theater major and her mother have seen “The Phantom of the Opera” a combined 15 times as well). So they’re slightly less bewildered by the phenomenon of repeat attendance than I am, and it seems to me that there are people who see shows multiple times and there are those who don’t, and the ones who do can’t help me understand why this, why now.

I cast my net even wider and further backward, interviewing the cast about the remarkable origins of the show. Three of the five — Hodgson, Cumming and Roberts — were schoolmates at the University of Warwick, where they did theater together and, after graduation, formed a horror-comedy troupe with others called Kill the Beast. When Hodgson heard a podcast about the real-life Operation Mincemeat, she shared it with Cumming and Roberts, as well as with Hagan, a musician she was in a punk glam band with. The story was so nuts and unexpected that they knew it would make a great musical, and they worked at odd jobs for years while they put it together. They applied for grants, took advice, doubled, quadrupled and quintupled roles for the budget’s sake and then cast two more people and started out in a small theater, then a larger one, then an even larger one, then a West End one, then a Broadway one. I learned things I never would have known. There’s a fake hand onstage (Mincefluencers, meet me in the comments!!!). And Hodgson considered playing Hester (ibid.!!!!!).