The Old Globe

Rees Show Highlights Special Spring Offerings

Tony–Award winner Roger Rees will return to the Old Globe in San Diego on April 28 for a one-night-only engagement of What You Will, his hysterical (and somewhat historical) 90-minute gallop through the world of Shakespeare.

The theater has also scheduled a special event for May 3 at 11 a.m. when Old Globe Artistic Director Barry Edelstein will offer an encore of Thinking Shakespeare Live!, his 90-minute exploration of the language of Shakespeare. This fast-paced program based on Edelstein's book, Thinking Shakespeare: A How-To Guide for Student Actors, Directors, and Anyone Else Who Wants to Feel More Comfortable with the Bard, reveals a performer's approach to Shakespearean language so that audiences may easily understand the poetry of The Bard.

“The Old Globe is one of this country's most important producers of Shakespeare, and because his works are in our DNA, it's our pleasure and our duty to offer our audiences new ways to connect with and enjoy them,” Edelstein said in a press release announcing the two events. “These two special events do precisely that. My Thinking Shakespeare Live! is a glimpse into the ways actors and directors bring Shakespeare's words to life. And Roger Rees's remarkable What You Will is a scintillating example of Shakespeare at its best. Roger is a master, one of the greatest Shakespeareans we have. In his hands, Shakespeare is fun, immediate, and entirely joyous. I could listen to him do Shakespeare all day long, and I know San Diego will swoon at this brilliant evening.”

Rees, the acclaimed actor known for his roles on Cheers and The West Wing and his Tony-winning turn in Broadway's The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby, will bring to life The Bard's most beautiful soliloquies, along with sidesplitting accounts of some of the funniest disasters ever perpetrated on the classical stage. Romeo, Juliet's foolish Nurse, gory Macbeth, Hamlet, the oh-so-tragic Richard II, and even Charles Dickens, Noël Coward, and Stevie Wonder make appearances. The Washington Post declared that in What You Will, Rees “conveys each character with the combination of technique and magnetism that has distinguished the Royal Shakespeare Company actors of his generation.”

What You Will is to play on the Donald and Darlene Shiley Stage in the Old Globe Theatre, part of the Globe's Conrad Prebys Theatre Center. Tickets begin at $33 for subscribers and $35 for general audiences and can be purchased online at www.TheOldGlobe.org, by phone at 619-23-GLOBE, or by visiting the box office at 1363 Old Globe Way in Balboa Park.

Rees will direct the Globe's world premiere production of the musical Dog and Pony, with book by Rick Elice and music and lyrics by Michael Patrick Walker, running May 29–June 29. He previously directed Old Globe productions of The Merry Wives of Windsor and Love's Labour's Lost. On Broadway, he recently starred in the revival of The Winslow Boy and directed Rick Elice's Peter and the Starcatcher with Alex Timbers (also at New World Stages), for which he received a Tony Award nomination for Direction of a Play. Rees won the 1982 Tony Award for Actor in a Play for The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby, and he was nominated in the same category in 1995 for Indiscretions.

An ideal introduction to The Bard for families and young audiences, Edelstein's Thinking Shakespeare Live! will take place on the Donald and Darlene Shiley Stage. Tickets are $10 for subscribers and full-time students and $15 for general audiences and can be purchased online at www.TheOldGlobe.org, by phone at 619-23-GLOBE, or by visiting the Box Office at 1363 Old Globe Way in Balboa Park.

Edelstein will make his Old Globe Summer Shakespeare Festival directorial debut with the tragedy Othello, running June 22–July 27 in the Lowell Davies Festival Theatre. Othello will feature Blair Underwood making his Old Globe debut in the title run, with Richard Thomas as Iago and Kristen Connolly as Desdemona.

April 10, 2014

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