A satirical comedy about the tiny, impoverished Duchy of Grand Fenwick, whose entire economy depends on the export of its one product, wine, which is threatened by a cheap American knockoff. In desperation, the Duchy's leaders hatch an absurd scheme: declare war on the United States, lose quickly and decisively, and then collect the generous foreign aid America always lavishes on its defeated enemies. Naturally, the plan goes hilariously awry when the ragtag Fenwickian army, sent to formally surrender, accidentally captures a top-secret American superweapon and inadvertently wins the war instead. The play is a sharp, gently absurdist satire of Cold War politics, foreign aid, and the arms race, using its tiny fictional nation to poke fun at the outsized anxieties of the atomic age.

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