Olivier Award- and Tony Award-winning actor Roger Rees is best known to American audiences for his work on the small screen — as the dashing English tycoon Robin Colcord on “Cheers,” as British Ambassador Lord John Marbury on “The West Wing” and, most recently, as Dr. Colin Marlow on “Grey’s Anatomy.”
At 8 p.m. Nov. 20 at Edison Theatre, Rees, a 22-year veteran of the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC), will return to the stage with “What You Will,” a side-splitting one-man-show that combines the Bard’s greatest soliloquies with colorful observations about the acting life and offbeat (and occasionally bawdy) tales of theatrical disaster.
This special one-night-only performance is presented as part of the Edison Theatre OVATIONS Series.
Offering an actor’s-eye-view of the pleasures and challenges of performing the Bard, “What You Will” draws on a wealth of theatrical lore as well as on Rees’ own extensive Shakespearean repertoire (he currently holds the Stratford-Upon-Avon record for performances of “Hamlet,” with 150).
The worst thing about the “To be or not to be” soliloquy, Rees quips, is that the audience already knows everything you’re going to say. Perhaps the most difficult line to deliver appears in Macbeth, when Malcolm, told of his father’s murder, too-calmly asks, “By whom?”
Meanwhile, Rees reports that, according to his friend Dame Judi Dench, the best moment in playing Juliet is “the nanosecond when they offer you the part.”
Other stories range from Rees’ dinner with Sir Laurence Olivier to historical anecdotes about earlier Shakespearean actors, including Edmund Kean’s lascivious preshow appetites and David Garrick’s 18th-century special-effects wig.
Rees punctures the romantic hagiography that has grown up around the Bard, comparing the da-DUM da-DUM da-DUM beat of iambic pentameter to the CNN news ticker and pointing out similarities between Romeo’s “what light through yonder window” speech and Stevie Wonder’s “You Are the Sunshine of My Life.”
Reese also recounts stories about Shakespeare by other writers, including James Thurber and Charles Dickens, and defends him from literary attack by D.H. Lawrence and Voltaire, the latter of whom charged that the plays constitute “an enormous dunghill, appreciated only in London and Canada.”
Conversely, Rees fends off clueless chatroom students who complain about “Islamic pentameter” and “wish Shakespeare was dead.” Mixed with it all are Rees’ own virtuoso recitals of famous scenes, such as Macbeth’s chilling dagger vision and Henry V’s rousing “muse of fire” speech.
“Roger Rees may be alone for the duration of ‘What You Will,’ but he brings with him 400 years’ worth of English history and literary criticism as well as some of Shakespeare’s most beautiful verse,” wrote the San Francisco Examiner. The Washington Post added that Rees “conveys each character with the combination of technique and magnetism that has distinguished the RSC actors of his generation.”
Born in Wales, Rees was raised in London and originally studied painting and lithography at the famed Slade School of Fine Arts. He worked for a time as a scene painter before joining the RSC in 1968 with his friend Ben Kingsley. At first, he played a series of servants, soldiers and other minor roles but eventually graduated to more substantial parts, including Roderigo in “Othello,” Claudio in “Much Ado About Nothing” and finally, “Hamlet.”
Rees’ big break came in 1980 when, at age 36, he starred in the RSC’s epic, two-part “The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby,” winning both Olivier and Tony awards. He made his big-screen debut in 1983 with “Star 80,” and has since been featured in dozens of films, ranging from “Frida,” “The Prestige” and “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” to comic turns in “The Pink Panther” and “Robin Hood: Men in Tights.”
In 1992, he was nominated for an OBIE Award for his performance in “The End of the Day” and, in 1995, received a Tony best actor nomination for “Indiscretions.”
Rees developed “What You Will” in 2007 for the Folger Theatre in Washington, D.C., though the show’s true provenance is much older. During his tenure with the RSC, he crafted similar informal evenings with Dench and her husband, Michael Williams, and later created the show “Sons and Mothers” with Virginia McKenna, who had played Gertrude to his Hamlet. Other one-man shows have focused on Dickens, Thomas Hood and the King James version of the Book of Revelations. He also co-wrote, with Rick Elice, the hit comedy thriller “Double, Double,” which ran for a year in London’s West End.
Tickets — $20 for students and children; $28 for faculty, staff and seniors; and $32 for the public — are available at the Edison Theatre Box Office and through all MetroTix outlets.
For more information, call 935-6543 or e-mail edison@wustl.edu.