Book: Kiera Zhang
Music and Lyrics: Xioahan Zhou
Director: Xiaoyu Wang
Some musicals grapple with large-scale events and their consequences, from the founding of America in Hamilton to the fall of the Weimar Republic in Cabaret. However large the story, though, it is the personal stories within that inspire: the various people stranded in Newfoundland in the aftermath of 9/11 in Come From Away, for instance.
On the face of it, Kiera Zhang and Xioahan Zhou’s After Winter is so far at the opposite end of the spectrum as to risk feeling slight or inconsequential. Its story is a simple one: Cheng Yuan (Eo Wang) is a housewife whose only daughter is growing older, and whose husband is dismissive of the work she does to keep the house clean and food on the table. She decides to return to work, which further exposes the fractures in her marriage.
But while that story is among the smallest of possible themes for a musical, it ties into themes that resonate far beyond the family’s walls. Alongside Cheng Yuan’s story sits that of Rose Li’s Wang Yushun, a woman in her twenties who rage quits her job (at the workplace of Cheng Yuan’s husband) due to the unfulfilling work and dismissive attitude of her bosses towards her role.
Together, the women support each other in hunting for new jobs, and each finds barriers towards re-entering the workforce that are rooted in misogyny. Wang is barraged with questions about when she will marry and have children, the presumption being that it will make her less committed to long-term employment; in contrast, Cheng Yuan is interrogated about whether her motherhood will take precedence, for the same reasons.
With a musical whose book and lyrics are exclusively in Mandarin, the temptation is to suggest that these attitudes to women in the workforce are problems somehow unique to another country, that sexist attitudes to employment have somehow been solved elsewhere. That’s not true, of course: we have laws in place now to make such sexist attitudes to recruitment illegal, but legislation only exists out of necessity.
Xioahan Zhou’s songs tend towards the balladic throughout the show’s hour, which means that there is much less of a change of mood and tempo than many a Eurocentric musical might incorporate. Most of the songs fall on Wang’s shoulders, and that’s to the show’s benefit. Her voice has a beautiful clarity that suits the show’s melodies well.
The book is less successful, at least to the ears of a non-Mandarin speaker (the whole show is surtitled in English, although the only placement available for the captions is right underneath some bright lights, often washing them out to the point of illegibility). The heartfelt emotion of the songs feels mismatched with the dialogue, which often feels pedestrian and matter-of-fact, especially in the conversations between Cheng Yuan and her husband, Rowan Zhang’s Xiang Long. It makes the musical’s biggest stressor on their marriage – he has been offered a big promotion in a new city, which he has accepted without discussing it with his family – carry far less weight than it deserves.
That said, the relationship between Cheng Yuan and Wang still resonates and helps elevate the turmoil she feels as she weighs loyalty to her family against her own happiness and ambition. After Winter is at its best when we are within Cheng Yuan’s thought processes; within Eo Wang’s performance, there is a sense that this small-scale story has the potential to be the most important of all.
Runs until 2 June 2026
