Author Archives: Carissa Youse

Set in the forgotten corners of Appalachia, Yale Cabaret’s final show of the semester, “Language of Angels,” follows a group of old friends dealing with the aftermath of a mysterious tragedy. “Dawson’s Creek” meets David Lynch in this eerie play, when one of the friends, Celie, goes missing during a normal evening of teenage debauchery »

There is a growing population within the Yale community who have secretly tried and failed to learn Beyonce’s “Single Ladies” dance on more than one occasion. And for us, Rhythmic Blue’s newest show, “Lessons in Love,” is both a godsend and a sad reminder that we will never be able to move like that. “Lessons »

You remember that first time you read anything by James Joyce and you had no idea what the hell he was trying to say, but somehow you just knew that it was profound? Yeah, this play isn’t quite like that. That is to say, Yale Cabaret’s latest play, “A Portrait of the Woman as a »

This weekend, student director Julondre Brown ’10 takes on “Intimate Apparel,” Lynn Nottage’s DRA ’89 drama about love, or the lack thereof, in New York circa 1905. The drama centers on an unmarried, black seamstress who creates intimate garments for customers. But when the play is stripped of all the frivolity of corsets and lacy »

A single light illuminates the face of a well-dressed man onstage. He launches into a cryptic monologue describing a dream he had about his little brother. “You disappeared, like you never was,” he tells his unseen sibling. The light fades out and the tenor sax eases in, and we are transported into a dark, dramatic »

M. Ward is exactly the kind of boy you would want to marry, the kind of boy who wears exhausted flannel shirts as he strums acoustic love songs from across the illegal bonfire in your backyard. In fact, his music is kind of like a flannel shirt: his voice is soft and scraggy, his lyrics »

As I descended the stairs of the Cabaret for the debut of “Hold for Beauty,” I was already in a bad mood. Nothing could distract me from the fact that there was nacho cheese spilled on my pants, the wind was fucking freezing and it was almost Valentine’s Day and not one of my few »

A drum steadily beats as the low drone of a flute hums on. Doctors clad in white shuffle quietly in the corners. A straitjacket-confined girl sits eerily still in the middle of a room, her black-painted eyes a stark contrast to the pale sterility of her surroundings. A dark, shrouded figure whirls and dances about »

Shot entirely with a handheld camera, Jonathan Demme’s “Rachel Getting Married” could easily be hailed as the most stunning home movie of all time. The gritty-yet-eloquent film follows a recovering drug addict who returns from rehab to her suburban Connecticut home for her older sister’s wedding. Over one extremely long and strained weekend, years of »

“The Long Christmas Ride Home” is a play of blurred boundaries — between past and present, love and hate, life and death. “What do we believe?” the youngest daughter pleads. And as the play progresses, these perceived boundaries become more and more skewed, until the audience is no longer able to answer that question for »

Listening to Los Campesinos!’ upcoming “We Are Beautiful, We Are Doomed” straight through is like consuming all of your Halloween candy at once: sugary-sweet and then horrible. You are raised to the giddiest of highs by the band’s synth hooks, only to be dropped by their lyrics. “I think it’s fair to say that I »

As you descend the creaky stairs into the depths of the Yale Cabaret, you are unavoidably overwhelmed with brown. The floor, the walls, the table, the chairs — all devoid of color, all brown. The walls are papered in drawings of manatees and mermaids and math problems. All created with demure earth tones. But just »