Roger Rees

Rees was born in Aberystwyth, Cardiganshire, Wales, the son of Doris Louise (née Smith), a shop clerk, and William John Rees, a police officer. He and his parents moved to Balham, London, where he grew up. He studied art at the Camberwell College of Arts and the Slade School of Fine Art, turning to acting when he was painting backdrops at the Wimbledon Theatre and was asked to fill a part in a play. ==Career==

in 1985 Rees continued his career with the Royal Shakespeare Company. He recorded many audiobooks, including Memnoch the Devil by Anne Rice. From November 2004 to October 2007, Rees was artistic director of the Williamstown Theatre Festival, only the fourth person to hold the post in its half-century history. He replaced Nathan Lane in the role of Gomez Addams in the Broadway musical adaptation of The Addams Family, on 22 March 2011 and remained until the end of the run on 31 December 2011. In 2012, Rees took his one-man Shakespeare show, What You Will, to London's West End, playing a three-week engagement at the Apollo Theatre. In 2013, Rees directed Crispin Whitell's play, The Primrose Path, at the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis. In 2014, Rees directed Dog and Pony, a musical written by Rick Elice and Michael Patrick Walker, which had its world premiere at the Old Globe Theatre in San Diego. His last role was as Anton Schell in the musical version of The Visit, opposite Chita Rivera, which opened on Broadway on 23 April 2015 and closed on 14 June 2015. Rees left the production in May 2015 owing to his illness. Rees was to have directed a new musical written by Elice and Will Van Dyke, Magnificent Climb, in the fall of 2016 at MCC Theater in New York City. He was also scheduled to perform his one-man Shakespeare show, What You Will in New York in the autumn of 2015, and had hoped to return to the Royal Shakespeare Company for a stint in Don Quixote in 2016. He was inducted into the exclusive entertainment fraternity, the Grand Order of Water Rats, as a full member. ==Personal life==

Rees lived in the United States for more than 25 years He converted to Judaism in the 1980s. Rees married his partner of 33 years, playwright Rick Elice, in 2011, shortly after same-sex marriage in New York was legalised. Rees and Elice also collaborated professionally, including as co-playwrights of the comedic thriller Double Double. Elice co-wrote (with Marshall Brickman) the libretto for The Addams Family musical, the cast of which Rees joined on 22 March 2011. In 2012, Elice and Rees received Tony Award nominations for Elice's stage adaptation and Rees' co-direction (with Alex Timbers), respectively, of Peter and the Starcatcher. Illness and death After a diagnosis of brain cancer in October 2014, Rees focused his energy on his commitment to playing opposite Chita Rivera on Broadway in The Visit, the final musical written by John Kander and Fred Ebb. While undergoing two brain surgeries, two courses of radiation and ongoing chemotherapy, Rees managed to rehearse, preview and open in The Visit on 23 April 2015. By the middle of May, it had become too difficult for him to speak, and he left the show. Rees died at age 71 at his home in New York City on 10 July 2015. On 15 July 2015, the marquee lights at all the theatres on Broadway were dimmed in his honour. His ashes were scattered in the Atlantic Ocean. Two months later, there was a memorial service for him at Broadway's New Amsterdam Theatre. On 16 November 2015, Rees was inducted, posthumously, into the Broadway Theatre Hall of Fame. ==Acting credits==

Film Television Theatre • The Comedy of Errors (as Antipholus of Syracuse), Stratford-on-Avon and London, 1976 • Three Sisters (as Tusenbach) Stratford-upon-Avon London and tour, 1979 • "The Suicide" by Nikolai Erdman (as Semyon Semyonovich). Royal Shakespeare Company. 1979. • Cymbeline (as Posthumus), Royal Shakespeare Company, Stratford-on-Avon 1979 • Cymbeline (as Posthumus), Royal National Theatre, 1980 • The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby (as Nicholas Nickleby), Royal Shakespeare Company :*Aldwych Theatre, London, June 1980 – June 1981 :*Plymouth Theatre, Broadway, September 1981 – March 1982 • The Real Thing (as Henry), London, 1982 • Hapgood by Tom Stoppard as Kerner, London March 1988 • Hamlet as Hamlet, Royal Shakespeare Company, Stratford upon Avon, 1984 • The End of the Day (as Graydon Massey), Playwrights Horizons, off-Broadway, 1992 • Indiscretions (as George), Ethel Barrymore Theatre, Broadway, 1995 • A Man of No Importance (as Alfie Byrne), Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater, off-Broadway, 2002 • Waiting for Godot (as Vladimir, replacing Patrick Stewart), Haymarket Theatre, London, 2010 • Waiting for Godot (as Vladimir), His Majesty's Theatre, Perth, 2010 • Waiting for Godot (as Vladimir), Her Majesty's Theatre, Adelaide, 2010 • Waiting for Godot (as Vladimir), Comedy Theatre, Melbourne, 2010 • The Addams Family (as Gomez [Replaced Nathan Lane]), Broadway, 2011 • Peter and the Starcatcher (co-director with Alex Timbers), Broadway, 2012 (and then it moved to an Off-Broadway theatre in 2013) • What You Will (Actor, Writer, Director) Apollo Theater, London 2012 • Herringbone (Director) 2012 • The Primrose Path (Director), Guthrie Theater, 2013 • The Winslow Boy (as Arthur Winslow), American Airlines Theatre, Broadway, 2013 • Dog and Pony (Director) Old Globe Theater 2014 • The Visit (musical version; as Anton Schell), Broadway, 2015 ==References==