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Inspired by Cao Xue Qin’s A Dream of the Red Chamber, the Crabflower Club is set in a noble Qing household surrounding the 5 female protagonists oblivious to the country in tatters, fussing over the Patriarch’s pending 60th birthday, preparing a crab feast, hence the name of the secret poetry club.

The intelligent, overfed and repressed women met nightly leading to the feast to compose poetry in the kitchen, exchanging gossips and confessing their unhappiness over unfaithful, heartless men masquerading as husbands, while the lasses bored and hyper-inquisitive sought the picture-perfect romance in novels, seeking to meet men under the veil of moonlight.

Though the play is sufficiently entertaining, with witty dialogues and ostentatious costumes and setting, I felt that it would be more satisfactory if the ending does not taper off abruptly.