I have just returned from a week in New York, NY, a lively city full of friendly and resilient people who would not want to live anyplace else. So it was appropriate, if unexpected, that yesterday afternoon I would enter the Gate Theatre in London’s Notting Hill to find it having been turned into a New York comedy club.
On the stage are Ethan Lipton and his three piece orchestra. Ethan is one of those New Yorkers who have grown up in the city they love. Just like Mayor Bloomberg he has made a career of cleaning raw data to turn it into useful information and just like Mayor Bloomberg he has a second job. Unlike mayor Bloomberg, Ethan was a fairly low-level part-time employee and unlike Mayor Bloomberg his other job subsidised and thus made possible by the first one by the first one, is that of a writer and performer.
Ethan and his band proceed in words and song to tell us the story of his employer, the information providing company, relocating from Brooklyn to planet Mars. Well, it may not really be Planet Mars but for a man from Brooklyn relocating to anywhere outside New York City might as well be relocating to Planet Mars; except perhaps having to relocate to New Jersey, the other side of Manhattan, which would be marginally worse than living on Mars.
In “No Place to Go ” Ethan Lipton and his band have put together a heartbreaking authentic story taking us through an emotional roller coaster of a middle-aged man and his colleagues facing up to the inevitable which hits them unprepared. It is a story that rings painfully true in the voice of the employee, a perspective from which it is rarely articulated. The force of gravity of our market system means that that roller coaster will drag us down. The force of human spirit means, that as we do not go gently into that good night, which the search for shareholders value has in store for many a knowledge worker in our postindustrial age. The human spirit, even middle-aged, searches creatively for coping strategies. “No Place To Go” is a deeply true and moving story told in an original manner in soliloquy and song. It comes from the heart of New York City, post 9/11 post financial crisis. And New York City has a very human heart.
Despite some shortcomings in the acoustics that occasionally made it difficult to follow some of the lyrics, No Place To Go, worthy winner of the OBIE award and voted Best Lounge Show In New York, is definitely worth seeing.
http://www.gatetheatre.co.uk/whats-on/no-place-to-go.aspx
On the stage are Ethan Lipton and his three piece orchestra. Ethan is one of those New Yorkers who have grown up in the city they love. Just like Mayor Bloomberg he has made a career of cleaning raw data to turn it into useful information and just like Mayor Bloomberg he has a second job. Unlike mayor Bloomberg, Ethan was a fairly low-level part-time employee and unlike Mayor Bloomberg his other job subsidised and thus made possible by the first one by the first one, is that of a writer and performer.
Ethan and his band proceed in words and song to tell us the story of his employer, the information providing company, relocating from Brooklyn to planet Mars. Well, it may not really be Planet Mars but for a man from Brooklyn relocating to anywhere outside New York City might as well be relocating to Planet Mars; except perhaps having to relocate to New Jersey, the other side of Manhattan, which would be marginally worse than living on Mars.
In “No Place to Go ” Ethan Lipton and his band have put together a heartbreaking authentic story taking us through an emotional roller coaster of a middle-aged man and his colleagues facing up to the inevitable which hits them unprepared. It is a story that rings painfully true in the voice of the employee, a perspective from which it is rarely articulated. The force of gravity of our market system means that that roller coaster will drag us down. The force of human spirit means, that as we do not go gently into that good night, which the search for shareholders value has in store for many a knowledge worker in our postindustrial age. The human spirit, even middle-aged, searches creatively for coping strategies. “No Place To Go” is a deeply true and moving story told in an original manner in soliloquy and song. It comes from the heart of New York City, post 9/11 post financial crisis. And New York City has a very human heart.
Despite some shortcomings in the acoustics that occasionally made it difficult to follow some of the lyrics, No Place To Go, worthy winner of the OBIE award and voted Best Lounge Show In New York, is definitely worth seeing.
http://www.gatetheatre.co.uk/whats-on/no-place-to-go.aspx
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