The Crab Flower Club

Introduction and Synopsis

More than a decade after its success at Singapore Arts Festival 2009, Goh Boon Teck’s theatrical tour de force The Crab Flower Club returns to the stage for its first Mandarin iteration in Singapore. This drama-opera is grounded by seven poems from Cao Xueqin’s literary masterpiece Dream of the Red Chamber—one of the four great classical novels of Chinese literature.

Set in the late Qing Dynasty, the respectable Wu household’s five daughters reunite on the eve of their father’s 60th birthday. The ladies’ twin mission is clear—to prepare an exquisite feast of crabs for the master of the household and set up a clandestine all-women poetry club in a highly patriarchal society, where women were still resigned to more traditional and conservative roles.

Awakening the dormant poets within their souls, the Wu ladies leverage their talents for this exchange of emotions and quick-witted verse. Words are pickled, skewered and boiled; wit is seared and charred; expressions are stirred and steamed to perfection as each daughter reveals her menu of love. The lyrical exchanges in the Wu household’s kitchen herald the winds of change sweeping across the entire country.

Commissioned by Esplanade and produced by Toy Factory Productions, The Crab Flower Club pays homage to Singapore’s Ping Sheh Peking Opera Society. The performance features Chinese opera artists and live musicians on stage, who will demonstrate the artistic possibilities in this fusion of contemporary theatre and Chinese opera. Indulge in this magnificent banquet of crabs, flowers, opera and the poetic vagaries of life!