(718) 260–2500 Brooklyn Paper’s essential guide to the Borough of Kings January 17–23, 2020
By Kevin Duggan
Brooklyn Paper
You can skate in the sky!
A slick synthetic ice rink is
now welcoming skaters on the
23rd floor of the William Vale hotel.
The Vale Rink, which opened in
late December on the rooftop of the
swanky Williamsburg lodge, will offer
Brooklynites a surface for skating
and a dramatic skyline backdrop for
the winter months.
Instead of ice, the rink uses Swissengineered
synthetic panels called
Glice, which Alpine scientists have
designed to feel as close as possible
to its frozen water counterpart. The
surface does not need water, electricity,
or cooling, which makes it easier
to maintain and more environmentally
friendly than traditional ice rinks,
claims the company.
This reporter was eager to give
the rooftop rink a try as soon as he
ICE
THEATER
heard about it.
On a chilly recent afternoon, I arrived
at the Vale’s top floor. A heated
tent offers space to relax on cozy sofas
while sipping hot chocolate, coffee,
or a hot toddy, but I was ready
to go straight to the rink.
Admission costs $20 for adults and
$12 for kids, which includes rental skates
(you can bring your own skates, as long
as they are sharp enough, but you will
still pay the full admission).
I signed a waiver and strapped on
my bladed shoes, and was ready to
go. I hadn’t gone ice skating for years,
so I was off to a rocky start, flailing
and struggling to stay upright, and
providing ample amusement to photographer
Caroline Ourso, who was
watching me from the sidelines.
The fake ice looks just like the real
thing, but feels harder and slightly
more slippery. The blades of the skates
do not cut into the material as deeply,
but the surface is only two percent less
glideable than a standard ice sheet, according
to the company’s website.
After a few minutes, I got the hang
of gliding across the glice, and before
I knew it I was transported back to my
childhood, skating around the frozen
lakes of the Swiss Alps.
But a quick look at the skyline reminded
me that I was not slicing my
way among snow-capped mountains,
but was 200 feet above the streets of
Williamsburg. Fortunately, visitors
need not fear skating over the edge
— at its narrowest point, the rink’s
waist-high fence is located a safe six
feet from the roof’s higher, more substantial
glass barrier.
Kids unsure on their skates can
sit on a cute plastic animal that looks
like a whale and be pushed around
— and I can attest that the beast can
also hold an adult’s weight.
The Vale Rink is definitely a fun
experience, and it offers one of the
borough’s most dramatic backdrops,
which is sure to draw crowds with its
highly-Instagrammable views.
COMEDY
Fluffed up
He’s the most interesting man in the world.
A local comedian might discuss his tour with
the Beatles, his membership in the Brat Pack,
the time he accidentally launched Brexit, or any
number of other tall tales at a live recording of
the podcast “History Fluffer,” at Park Slope’s
Union Hall on Jan. 24.
The improvised fake history show stars Dave
Hill as a comedic “Forrest Gump”–like figure
recalling his involvement with key historical
moments, while fellow comics Jim Biederman,
Jodi Lennon, and Chris Gersbeck add details
and egg him on.
“I basically just b------- the whole story,” Hill
said. “It’s really fun and silly.”
The stories are completely off-the-cuff, with
the team of comedians coming up with a historical
subject a few hours before each showtime.
The comics sometimes build a narrative based
on accurate details before veering off into the
absurd, but just as often start with no facts at all,
and only touch on the ostensible subject in the
last five minutes of the hourlong show.
Past episodes have fluffed Hill’s time as a member
of the Ramones, the time he helped J.R.R.
Tolkien write “The Lord of the Rings,” and his
time as the Son of Sam’s dog walker.
The podcast has been recording regularly
for about a year, with the comedians alternating
between episodes taped in the studio and
live shows. The live episodes are a kind of improv
endurance test, said Hill, with everyone
having to think on their feet with no breaks,
but having a live audience provide laughs is a
worthy payoff.
“The fun thing about having the audience
is just getting that reaction,” he said. “It’s even
more of a challenge because you’re trying to
keep the ball in the air.”
The “History Fluffer” show at Union Hall is
a part of the third Brooklyn Podcast Festival,
which will host more than 15 live podcasts between
Jan. 22 and 26, including an episode of
NPR’s “Ask Me Another” featuring “High Maintenance”
star Ben Sinclair at the Bell House
on Jan. 22, the Dungeons and Dragons podcast
“Rude Tales of Magic” on Jan. 23, and accurate
history podcast “The Bowery Boys” at the Bell
House on Jan. 26.
“History Fluffer” at Union Hall 702 Union St.
between Fifth and Sixth avenues in Park Slope,
(718) 638–4400, www.unionhallny.com. Jan. 24
at 9:30 pm. $15. — Ben Verde
By Bill Roundy
Brooklyn Paper
She’s got a heart of gold.
One of Shakespeare’s least-known
plays will get a vital new staging this
weekend, a revival that deals with gender,
greed, and loyalty.
The star of “Timon of Athens,” which
opens at Fort Greene’s Polonsky Shakespeare
Center on Jan. 19, says that diving
deep into the canon offers a chance
to break new ground.
“It’s exciting to welcome people to a
play that they’re not familiar with, and
don’t know the story,” said Kathryn Turner,
who plays the title character.
The play follows a wealthy Athenian
who lavishes money on his friends, goes
broke, and is abandoned by those same
friends.
He retreats to the woods and becoming
a misanthropic hermit, only to discover a
hidden trove of gold there.
For this production, Timon has been
re-written as a woman — a change that
still feels true to Shakespeare’s time, said
Turner.
“Originally, the female parts were played
by men, so Shakespeare was always playing
gender games. So in that sense, we’re
very Shakespearean,” said Turner.
The creators briefly considered having
Turner play the part as a man, but
decided that it would be more interesting
with a woman in the lead, said the
show’s director.
“At this moment in time, a woman playing
it as a woman felt like the more audacious
option, in a strange way,” said Simon
Godwin, who developed the play with
Turner for a run with the Royal Shakespeare
Company in 2018.
Godwin is not precious with the words
of the Bard, noting that Shakespeare himself
was always experimenting with his
plays.
“The more experimental and brave we
are with them, the more I think Shakespeare
the-ghost likes us for that,” he
said.
The show has undergone a few changes
since its first production in England. It
opens in Timon’s over-the-top home, featuring
gold walls, gold chairs, and golden
cups. For New Yorkers, the scene evokes
the famously gilded accessories of Trump
Tower, but Godwin toned down the set to
downplay the connection.
“The set was actually much more gold,
and we’ve made it more silvery this time
in order to avoid too strict a parallel with
Trump,” he said.
The play has a lot to say about greed
and the power of money, but it is not particular
to this time, or to this president,
said Godwin.
“In the play, there are no easy symmetries,”
he said. “Is Timon Trump? Absolutely
not. But is there a resonance with
the corrosive power of money? Absolutely
yes.”
BOOKS
Reading picks
Word’s picks:
“Hitting a Straight
Lick with a Crooked
Stick,” by Zora Neale
Hurston
The title of this collection
of “lost stories” from
renowned Black writer
and ethnographer Zora
Neale Hurston encapsulates
her very unique
way of framing complex,
subversive ideas about race, gender, and class
within the assumed narrative confines of heterosexual
and familial relationships. Balancing
local folklore and highly specific dialect
with delicate prose, Hurston uses her “crooked
stick” to deliver hard truths about America’s
troubled past that prove shockingly relevant as
we enter 2020.
— Althea Meer, Word 126 Franklin St. at Milton
Street in Greenpoint, (718) 383–0096, www.
wordbookstores.com .
Community
Bookstore’s pick:
“Don’t Believe a
Word,” by David
Shariatmadari
This book, subtitled
“The Surprising Truth
about Language,” is a
brain-twisting tour of a
linguistic cabinet of curiosities
from a renowned
scholar of languages. With
wit, clarity, and anecdotes drawn from around
the globe, linguist David Shariatmadari reveals
that, all too often, the very language that grounds
our thoughts is actually quicksand.
— Samuel Partal, Community Bookstore 43
Seventh Ave. between Carroll Street and Garfield
Place in Park Slope, (718) 783–3075, www.
commu nityb ookst ore.net .
Greenlight
Bookstore’s pick:
“Cleanness,” by
Garth Greenwell
Garth Greenwell’s
prose is remarkably elegant.
On style alone, one
might mistake “Cleanness,”
the follow-up to his
debut “What Belongs to
You,” for some lost classic
novel, if it were not so
contemporary in its frank exploration of desire
and cruelty and the mixing of the two. It is already
one of my favorite books of the year.
— Matt Stowe, Greenlight Bookstore 686
Fulton St. between S. Elliott Place and S. Portland
Avenue in Fort Greene, (718) 246–0200,
www.greenlightbookstore.com .
Skater’s high
Brooklyn Paper tests a new
rooftop rink in Williamsburg
Easy mode: Photographer Caroline Ourso pushes Duggan on the
rink’s whale toy. Photo by Ayaka Hasegawa
Vale Rink at the William Vale
111 N. 12th St. at Wythe Avenue,
23rd fl oor, in Williamsburg, (718)
631-8400, www.thewilliamvale.
com. Open Wed–Thu, 2–10 pm;
Fri, 2 pm–midnight; Sat, noon–
midnight, and Sun, noon–10 pm.
$20 ($12 for kids).
Photo by Mindy Tucker
A power play
Obscure Shakespeare show confronts wealth and gender issues
Founder of the feast: Kathryn Turner, being held aloft, plays the wealthy title
character in Shakespeare’s “Timon of Athens,” opening on Jan. 19 at Theater
for a New Audience’s Polonsky Shakespeare Center in Fort Greene.
Photo by Henry Grossman
“Timon of Athens” at Theater for a
New Audience’s Polonksy Shakespeare
Center 262 Ashland Pl. between Fulton
Street and Lafayette Avenue in Fort
Greene, (866) 811–4111, www.tfana.
org. Jan. 19–Feb. 9; ; Tue–Fri at 7:30
pm; Sat at 2 pm and 7:30 pm; Sun at 3
pm. $90–$117 ($20 students or those 30
or younger).
/www.tfana
/www.wordbookstores.com
/www.wordbookstores.com
/www.commu
/www.commu
/www.greenlightbookstore.com
/www.thewilliamvale
/www.unionhallny.com
/www.unionhallny.com
/wordbookstores.com
/ore.net
/www.greenlightbookstore.com
/www.thewilliamvale
/www.tfana