A man who has held a steady job for 10 years as a "permanent part-time employee" faces the revelation that his company will relocate to Mars. Ethan Lipton and His Orchestra satirize the turmoil and banality of workforce life in "No Place to Go," a song-cycle laced with dark humor that takes the Hopkins Center stage tonight.
The show had a four-week run at Joe's Pub at the Public Theater in New York City last year and nabbed an Obie Award as well as a spot on The New York Times' list of the year's "most galvanizing moments."
Margaret Lawrence, Hop programming director, attended the show last winter and invited Lipton to perform on campus.
Lawrence said she was immediately attracted to Lipton's "offbeat and witty" style.
"The way he sees the world and his sense of humor are so consistently funny in a dead-pan style," Lawrence said.
The show's songs express the "foibles of regular life," Lawrence said, like a character's love for his office cubicle and the awkwardness he feels while coaching his son's soccer game.
Lipton said the performance's cutting humor targets the character's company and the protagonist, a "fictionalized version" of Lipton.
When he worked for a magazine in New York City, his company relocated to a new state that seemed, to Lipton, altogether foreign.
"It felt like it was moving to Mars, and all of the people I had worked with were faced with a complicated decision about what to do," Lipton said.
Though students may have little experience with instability in the workforce, both Lawrence and Lipton emphasized the universality of the show. It applies to anyone "struggling to figure it out," Lipton said.
"The sense of denial that runs through the thing is something anybody can relate to," he said.
The protagonist must reinvent himself to find stability in his life, similar to a recent college graduate who abandons the familiar university life and plunges into the workforce.
Though the show is satirical, Lipton does not consider the overall tone to be negative.
"In some ways, it's about hope," he said. "It is a hard look at the reality of our economy through the perspective of an unreliable person. It's not a happy show, it's about a difficult thing, but my experience is things that feel true make me feel good to be exposed to."
Named the best lounge act by New York Magazine, Ethan Lipton & His Orchestra blend jazz, folk, blues and hip-hop to produce a quirky style.
"We never play anything that we can't own," Lipton said. "We always want it to sound like us."
The band, formed in 2005, has released two live and three studio albums, and another is scheduled for release late next year.
To recreate the intimate club atmosphere in which Lipton typically performs, the audience will be capped at 80 people, seated on stage with the band. Lipton will dress in a suit and a tie.
"He doesn't look and dress like an indie rockstar," Lawrence said. "He looks like a mild-mannered office worker from Brooklyn."
"No Place To Go" is the first project for which Lipton combines writing and music, though he has considerable experience as a playwright. In "Meat," Lipton traces the adventures of two dogs that break into a Florida zoo and destroy the gazelle population, while "Luther" follows a couple who adopts a war veteran as casually as one would adopt an abandoned animal.
"They all mix darkish themes with humor, a little touch of the absurd and a heartfelt quality," Lipton said.
Lipton will perform "No Place to Go" alongside guitarist Eben Levy, standup bassist Ian Riggs and saxophonist Vito Dieterle tonight at 7 p.m. and 9:30 p.m. in Moore Theater. The group will also perform at the Portsmouth Music Hall on Saturday.
