/Saratoga

American Conservatory Theater will bring San

Francisco audiences an evening with stage, film, and television actor Roger

Rees, in his acclaimed  one-man show WHAT YOU WILL.

This hysterical (and

somewhat historical) 90-minute gallop through all things Shakespearean plays

for a limited engagement, July 18 (press opening Monday, July 21) through

Aug. 9  at American Conservatory Theater, 415 Geary Street, San

Francisco. 

The show was previously presented at the prestigious

Williamstown Theatre Festival in Williamstown, Mass., and the Folger Theatre in

Washington, D.C., to rapturous critical notice, including the Washington Post,

which declared that Mr. Rees, "conveys each character with the combination

of technique and magnetism that has distinguished the RSC actors of his

generation."

WHAT YOU WILL is a presentation of American Conservatory

Theater, in association with Evenstar Productions and LTM Artists. For

tickets and information the public may call the American Conservatory

Theater box office at 415-749-2228 or order online at www.act-sf.org.

WHAT YOU WILL has been described as 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 what was called "the comic highlight of the year

. . . a veritable riot of wit and laughter" by the North Adams Transcript,

which added: "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."

The

Berkshire Review described the show as, "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."

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. He was in San Francisco last as director of Here Lies Jenny,

starring Bebe Neuwirth, at the Post Street Theatre.