Press
“Twisted, dark, sophisticated, schleppy and sad all at once.”
–NPR’s Weekend Edition
“A sardonic voice that offers an unlikely kind of comfort against the vagaries of everyday life.”
–Popmatters
“A man of many talents, Ethan Lipton — a performer, playwright, composer and musician — has been equally multifarious in his choice of subject matter: For his charming cabaret piece “No Place to Go,” he faced the problems of relocating to Mars for work; he spent time with zombies and outlaws in the Old West for the sublimely silly horse opera “Tumacho;” and he hunkered down empathetically amid the monotony of the everyday office in shows like “Red-Handed Otter.”
–Ben Brantley, The New York Times
“With his earnest brown suits, mournful eyes, and neat mustache, Ethan Lipton looks less like a silken-throated lounge lizard than he does a beaten-down ad salesman—an ordinary Joe singing gentle songs about everyday life.”
–New York Magazine
“Tender, wise and occasionally hostile, Ethan’s like the tipsy uncle at the family reunion who spills the shameful family secrets—it’s uncomfortable but hilarious, and everyone feels better once the truth is out.”
– Matt Berninger of the National, The New York Times
“There’s a singer in Brooklyn who seems to be loved by nearly everybody who hears him … A singer with the cynicism and heart of Serge Gainsbourg, and the observant mind of a standup comic.”
–Marco Werman, PRI’s The World
“A show for anyone who has ever spent a sleepless night scouring real estate listings in search of simple human dignity or maybe a second bathroom, Ethan Lipton’s “The Outer Space” imagines escaping the ignominy of gentrification for a cozy spaceship orbiting Mercury. Sly, grumpy and just delightful, this sci-fi song cycle at Joe’s Pub chronicles life millions of miles from the nearest bodega.”
—Alexis Soloski, The New York Times
“Tumacho” plays dizzily with historical notions of American manliness (just pronounce its name), but in a more willfully absurdist key. Mr. Lipton… has said that this play was partly inspired by the epidemic of gun violence in the United States….What he has created, though, is hardly op-ed theater. Mr. Lipton takes up arms to disarm, with a cathartic exercise in wish fulfillment that even as it draws blood (in a variety of ways), drains the testosterone from the classic shoot-’em-up.”
–The New York Times
“…A section [of Red-Handed Otter] where the entire cast tries to mimic a growling rabbit is one of the most blissfully silly ensemble interludes I’ve seen in a while. And unlike other playwrights who use dead animals as a metaphor for unspeakable human cruelty (ahem, Martin McDongah!), Lipton’s stories reveal the bruised but rabbit-soft hearts of people who desire little more than basic creature comforts, wherever they stumble upon them.”
–Chicago Sun Times
“In this wine-dark satire [Luther], families adopt veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder to help them make the transition back into civilian life. In this alternate universe the adopted veterans hold a social status that falls between pet and child, while bourgeois “parents” coo over their own generosity toward America’s displaced heroes. It is a bizarre conceit and a disturbing one. But it’s one that Ethan Lipton’s trenchant script and Ken Rus Schmoll’s pitch-perfect direction deliver masterfully.”
–Catherine Rampell, The New York Times
“[In No Place to Go], He is expert at keeping music, jokes and personal narrative tightly knitted together into one consistent human package….Even though his vocalizing covers a wide vocabulary — from Louis Armstrong and Billie Holiday to Pete Seeger and George Jones — Mr. Lipton never seems to be doing impersonations or pretending to be anyone other than himself.”
–The New York Times
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