Wichita State University will bring Wichita audiences an evening with stage, film and television actor Roger Rees in his acclaimed one-man Shakespeare show “What You Will” at 7:30 p.m. Wednesday, Nov. 18, in Wilner Auditorium.
It’s a Connoisseur Series presentation of the College of Fine Arts and School of Performing Arts Theatre Program.
Roger Rees
The free tickets are thanks to a generous donation from the Sam and Rie Bloomfield Foundation, said Wendy Hanes, associate dean of fine arts.
“What You Will” has been described as an irreverent one-man everything there is “to be or not to be” about William Shakespeare. Rees, a 20-year veteran of the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC), presents the greatest soliloquies ever written, along with side-splitting accounts of some of the funniest disasters ever perpetrated on the Shakespearean stage.
Rees received international acclaim, receiving both Olivier and Tony Awards for his portrayal of the title role in the RSC’s “The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby.” Rees’ career also includes roles in such films as “The Prestige,” “The Pink Panther,” “Robin Hood: Men in Tights” and “Frida.”
American television audiences know him best as the British Ambassador Lord John Marbury in “The West Wing,” dashing English tycoon Robin Colcord on “Cheers” and Dr. Colin Marlow on “Grey’s Anatomy.”
In “What You Will,” 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 “the comic highlight of the year ... a veritable riot of wit and laughter” (North Adams Transcript).
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 … a delicious evening of theater in the fullest sense of the word.”
After “What You Will” played at the Folger Theatre in Washington, D.C., 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.”