ACT Presents Roger Rees' 'What You Will' Starting 7/18

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 August 9, 2008  at American Conservatory Theater, 415 Geary Street, San Francisco.  The show was previously presented at the prestigious Williamstown Theatre Festival in Williamstown, MA, and the Folger Theatre in Washington DC, 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.

Photos by Walter McBride/ Retna Ltd.