‘Operation Mincemeat’ at Emerson Colonial, Boston

“Operation Mincemeat,” at Emerson Colonial Theatre, Boston, through Oct. 25.

If you’ve heard anything about “Operation Mincemeat,” it’s probably that it’s riotously funny. It certainly is that. What you might not expect is that it’s brimming with heart — you’ll be moved, literally when you least expect it. Also, it’s one hell of a history lesson.

The show is based on a true story — a real one, not like the one from “Fargo” — but you’re probably better off not knowing all the details of the secret World War II mission that spawned the 2024 Olivier Award winner for Best New Musical. Let’s just say it involved a corpse, a fake pilot, and a plot to fool Hitler, and that “Operation Mincemeat” features uproarious songs about all those things.

In director Robert Hastie’s touring production at the Emerson Colonial, five brilliant performers — Mariah Copeland, Katie Kleiger, Luke Antony Neville, Erin Ramirez, and Jake Bentley Young — play 80 different characters of various cultures, dialects, and genders, often in the very same scene. Abetted by clever, ever-morphing costumes by Ben Stones and Jenny Arnold’s take-no-prisoners slapstick choreography, the show will make you swear you’re watching a much bigger cast.

But the quick-change trickery wouldn’t mean much if the actors didn’t bring so much talent and sheer verve to the table. Through perfect comic timing, vocal mastery of styles from ’40s swing to rap to girl-group pop, and sheer force of will, they create a core group of real, relatable characters and a veritable phalanx of supporting players who are just as compelling.

Though the score by creators David Cumming, Felix Hagan, Natasha Hodgson, and Zoë Roberts leans a little too heavily on Hamiltonian patter — “Operation Mincemeat” simply couldn’t exist without the groundwork laid by genre-bending 2010s musicals like “Hamilton” and “Six” — there’s more than enough variety of style to elevate the overall production. Just when you think you might be done with hip-hop, you’re on to a sea shanty (and a stirring one at that).

The show also probably bends too far over to include character songs when you’re eager for the labyrinthian plot to progress, but it’s hard to complain about numbers like “All the Ladies,” with Erin Ramirez going full Beyonce as the cast morphs into the MI-5 security service typing pool.

There are way too many standout performances, across so many different characters, to list here: Jake Bentley Young’s oddly newt-obsessed government entomologist, Mariah Copeland’s hapless, sangria-drinking British agent marooned in Spain, and Katie Kleiger’s self-absorbed driver of the mission, Ewen Matagu, are just a few. 

But it’s Luke Antony Neville who steals the show as Sir Bernard Spilsbury, the shady pathologist who actually finds a rhyme for “putrescence,” and especially as Hester Leggatt, head secretary in British naval intelligence, whose “Dear Bill,” a letter to their made-up pilot, is the show’s unexpected emotional center.

It’s worth noting that, with a plot as complicated as this one and exposition coming at you via mile-a-minute lyrics, there’s a chance you’ll feel lost until things get fully rolling. It might not be a bad idea to call up the opening number, “Born to Lead,” on YouTube or Spotify beforehand so you know what you’re getting into. But eventually you just give in to the chaos and all becomes clear.

“Operation Mincemeat” may not be the spectacle that some have come to expect from Broadway smashes — there are no flying DeLoreans here, although Ben Stones’s MI-5 headquarters sets are convincingly musty, and the set pieces in the “glitzy finale” (to quote one of the show’s several hilarious fourth-wall-breaking moments) were worth conserving the rest of the budget to make room for.  

The show’s real achievement, though, is the way it sweeps you up in very real stakes, and at times even leaves you choked up as the characters grapple with wartime themes of loyalty and sacrifice — all in between genuine belly laughs generated by rapping Nazis and flying trout. To paraphrase the Gershwins, when it comes to a satisfying theater experience, who could ask for anything more? 

The national tour of “Operation Mincemeat” plays at Emerson Colonial Theatre, 106 Boylston St., Boston, through Oct. 25. Tickets start at $52.65. For more information, visit atgtickets.com.