Roger Rees in WHAT YOU WILL, an evening with the stage, film, and television actor, is a hysterical (and somewhat historical) 90-minute gallop through all things Shakespearean. This acclaimed one-man show has been presented at the prestigious American Conservatory Theatre in San Francisco, CA, the Williamstown Theatre Festival in Williamstown, MA, LSU’s Reilly Theatre in Baton Rouge, LA and the Folger Theatre in Washington DC, to rapturous critical notice. The Washington Post declared that Rees “conveys each character with the combination of technique and magnetism that has distinguished the RSC actors of his generation.”

Roger Rees in WHAT YOU WILL is an irreverent one-man everything there is “to be or not to be” about William Shakespeare. Rees presents the greatest soliloquies ever written, along with side-splitting accounts of some of the funniest disasters ever perpetrated on the Shakespearean stage. Romeo, Juliet’s foolish Nurse, gory Macbeth, Hamlet, the oh-so-tragic Richard II, and even Charles Dickens, James Thurber, Noel Coward, and Stevie Wonder make appearances in this hilarious evening with a master of theatre.

Roger Rees received international acclaim, receiving both Olivier and Tony Awards for his portrayal of the title role in the Royal Shakespeare Company’s The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby. In addition to roles for the stage (he spent 22 years as a company member with the Royal Shakespeare Company), Rees’ illustrious career includes many roles in film (The Prestige, The Pink Panther, Robin Hood: Men in Tights, Frida, A Midsummer Night’s Dream) and television. American television audiences know him best as the dashing English tycoon Robin Colcord on Cheers, British Ambassador Lord John Marbury in The West Wing, and Dr. Colin Marlow on Grey’s Anatomy. Additionally, Rees is an accomplished playwright and stage director.

Reviews

“The comic highlight of the year . . . a veritable riot of wit and laughter” – North Adams Transcript

“Not since Monty Python’s Spamalot opened on Broadway have I laughed as heartily and often as I did at Roger Rees’ one-man show.” – North Adams Transcript

“At once merrily irreverent and respectful, audaciously dismissive and deserving, puckishly playful and protective, sublimely whimsical and wise. WHAT YOU WILL is a delicious evening of theater in the fullest sense of the word.” – The Berkshire Review