I once said that the worst thing that had ever happened to me in a theater was the time I couldn't leave CATS at the intermission because the bus wasn't running. Courtesy of the Yale Cabaret's performance of Nobel Laureate Elfriede Jelinek's Sleeping Beauty, I am no longer sure that this is so.

Now, it's not that I am categorically against mediocre ballet dancers flopping around on a bed of flower petals while spewing vaguely literary nonsense about the nature of time, God, and romance. And I am told that Jelinek "exposes the hypocracies, the façades and the hollowness of social conventions, rituals and patriarchal traditions which lead to the oppression of women and the abuse of power."

But it turns out that having an interesting topic and a willingness to defy taboo won't compensate for a total lack of aesthetic sense. It is stuff like this that gives theater a bad name.