The Lobster considers

Show & Culture

In a government-certified kitchen, food consumption has been bureaucratized and pleasure has become administratively inconvenient. Every morning, State Points Auditor Vetch checks the temperature of the cauldron as Citizen M comes to claim her lobster, earned through Alimentary Merit Points. As Citizen M secretly hopes to finally feel something and Vetch’s long-repressed desires rise to the surface, the lobster refuses to boil properly. Loosely inspired by David Foster Wallace’s essay Consider the Lobster, this work is a dystopian musical kaleidoscope about ethics, consumerism, pleasure, restraint and collective denial. Anne Simon approaches the subject in a grotesque, entertaining and discursive way.