A technically slick attempt at satire and surrealism but not quite hitting the mark for either
The problem with satire is that it’s currently dead. World events are now so incredulous that truth is stranger than fiction. Such is the world George Grant’s character Junior finds himself in during his new one-man play, Operation Blank.
He is a civil servant who has woken up to find himself the only sane person on a Microsoft Teams chat in which the Prime Minister needs to respond to the catastrophe of a nuclear bomb having dropped on the city of Copenhagen. For the next forty-five minutes we are treated to an array of hyperbolic characters all magnificently incompetent, frustrating any efforts to take this problem seriously.
Grant plays his serious self live on stage, and creatively plays all the caricatures on a well-edited Teams call. He plays the prime minister- ostensibly portrayed likely as a Tory PM rather than Labour; the civil servant who is inexplicably constantly doing bicep curls whilst topless; the civil servant who is so laid back in his Hawaiian shirt he is literally horizontal; and the elderly academic who cannot figure how to un-mute himself.
The concept of a Teams chat at work with inept colleagues is funny because it’s true. However this joke can only carry the play so far. Whilst Grant’s comic timing is legitimately impeccable, the problem is that the whole concept of a nuclear bomb being dropped on Copenhagen due to an email leaking the nuclear codes is so hellishly unbelievable that the audience doesn’t appreciate the farce. For satire to work, it needs to be based on truth. If, for example, the problem was that the US had invaded Greenland and farce came as a result of the UK’s response, that would be a satire grounded in truth. The best parts of the satire turned out to be two images of a tabloid newspaper pretending that Meghan Markle is responsible- it is genuinely feasible for a red top paper to blame her for starting a war.
An abrupt tone shift in the final fifteen minutes is sorely welcomed as a palate cleanser, though it feels like a bait and switch. In a sort of Fight Club-esque finale, the characters appear to be a combination of a split personality. Despite Grant’s excellent acting and slick editing, it is difficult to know what he is going for. The play is forty five minutes of overblown political farce that leads nowhere followed by fifteen minutes of existential dread about the horrors of modern workplace banality and wasting our lives on endless online calls. We get it- old people are rubbish at tech, colleagues are insufferable, genuine human connection is fleeting. The punch line does not meet the bloated prelude with any sense of satisfaction. It would make more sense if the political event was more credible. If the dread was the point, why preamble with so much unnecessary charade? Grant’s performance and technical talent shows a great deal of insight and observation but the storyline needs further focus. Despite excellent staging, this production is presently neither fully convincing as a red herring political satire nor as an absurdist presentation on contemporary working conditions. Give the dread more development time than the decoy plot device and this would amplify George Grant’s promising introspective piece.
Operation Blank plays at the Etcetera Theatre until 11th July before its Edinburgh Fringe Festival run.