Writer and Director: George Grant
Relentlessly farcical, dark, bleak and breakneck, George Grant’s intense, screen-mediated satire lays bare the absurdity and chaos of modern international politics and hierarchical power plays.
Set amid a COBRA-style meeting, held over Microsoft Teams because Whitehall is unavailable (Larry the cat is poorly), the action centres on Grant in the role of increasingly disillusioned British government minion ‘Junior’. As the sole live onstage presence, he attempts to elicit sensible responses from an unruly ministerial quintet of back-projected characters (all played by Grant) in the unfolding aftermath of a surprise nuclear attack on Copenhagen.
The ‘superiors’ are all woefully inadequate to the cause. There’s the louche, entitled PM, spread out Rees Mogg-like on his sofa, who fixates on canvassing the Great British public – “How should we get out of this pickle in Copenhagen?” – convening with his bestie the King, and directing any blame elsewhere.
The topless, muscle-flexing military adviser urges Junior to adopt a “Marine mindset” and prioritises campaign branding. In vacation mode, the Hawaiian-shirted minister recommends sitting back and relaxing in Thailand or Vietnam. “The only people that need plans are supervillains and architects.”
The tech contingent is represented by an anonymous, mouthy, pill-shaped potato, floating mid-screen, who has a suggestion for their PR campaign figurehead: “Try Cortez: he’s the podcasting sensation out of Madrid!” And then there’s the superannuated éminence grise who’s predictably on mute, mouthing ineffectually into the void as the other participants gesture manually.
Much of the humour is derived from the fact that no one knows anything about Denmark – “Should we help just the people of Copenhagen or the entirety of Iceland?” – and the cruel ways in which Junior is chided and belittled. “You’ve let yourself go: give me a thousand press-ups, maggot!”
Following Junior’s initial heroic statement – “The actions we take will echo through the annals of time” – the team veers from trying to find contingency plans – “There’s one for the Queen dying in Wales; why not this?” – to spitballing macho, Epic Fury-style operation names and formulating public online referendum questionnaires.
As the crisis spirals uncontrollably, Junior clutches his curls, adopts floor-based foetal positions and finds himself voicing profound doubts about politics, his choice of career and life path in general, leading to a thoughtful, contemplative conclusion. The shift from mockery to sobriety is well-handled, and is something of a relief after the fast-paced fusillade of gags and puns. They’re all good, but some are compromised in the frenzy. This may well be one of the downsides of having to conduct dialogue with pre-recorded excerpts, although overall Grant handles it with millimetric precision: everything flows smoothly and hitch-free.
There’s just a slight lack of differentiation between the onscreen avatars (the elderly character’s grey hair helps), but this could be easily resolved with make-up, costume and the use of other actors. Longer iterations of Operation Blank could also flesh out backstories and motivations.
A more profound issue facing the play, first aired a year ago, is that its absurdity has been outstripped by the antics of Trump, Putin, Starmer, Farage et al in the interim: there’s very little extra space for audience jaws to drop. In this ongoing heatwave, it also seems as though the summer silly season may become perpetual: everyone’s brains are frying.
Grant will have to decide whether to fix the play in a particular time frame or to keep updating it like The Mikado’s ‘I’ve Got a Little List’. While his reflections on the absence of ‘adults in the room’ and the crushing treadmills of everyday working life and bureaucracy could remain valid for a while, the shock value of Operation Blank may pall against a backdrop of increasingly ludicrous politicking and nuclear proliferation.
For now, it stands as a very funny, highly imaginative and technically impressive piece with plenty of scope for adaptation and development.
Reviewed on 10 July 2026
