Tony Award winner Rees and two-time Tony winner Neuwirth co-starred on the TV sitcom "Cheers" (she as Dr. Lilith Sternin, he as millionaire Rob Colcord) and later collaborated on the Off-Broadway revue of Kurt Weill songs, Here Lies Love (he as director, she as star).
Rees succeeds star Nathan Lane on March 22, 2011, at the Lunt-Fontanne Theatre. As macabre Gomez and Morticia, they will face growing pains in the haunted mansion they share; their teenage daughter, Wednesday, has fallen for a "normal" boy.
Rees won the Best Actor Tony Award for playing the title role in The Life And Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby; he was a Tony nominee for Indiscretions.
Lane's final performance as Gomez in The Addams Family will be March 6, 2011.
Rees and Neuwirth also co-starred as Kate and Petruchio in his production of The Taming of the Shrew at the Williamstown Theater Festival in 1999, and in Cabaret Verboten for Center Theater Group in Los Angeles. Welsh-born Rees most recently appeared on stage in New York City in the Flaherty/Ahrens musical A Man of No Importance for Lincoln Center Theater at the Mitzi Newhouse. Other Broadway credits include the Roundabout productions of Uncle Vanya and The Rehearsal. Off-Broadway, he starred in The End of the Day (for which he received an Obie Award) and The Uneasy Chair at Playwrights Horizons, plus The Misanthrope for Classic Stage Company. In London, he starred in the original productions of Tom Stoppard's The Real Thing and Hapgood. This year, he appeared with Ian McKellen in the acclaimed West End production of Waiting for Godot at the Theatre Royal Haymarket. In December, he will perform his solo Shakespeare show What You Will in Stratford-Upon-Avon.
Rees' film work includes Julie Taymor's "Frida," Mel Brooks' "Robin Hood: Men in Tights," Bob Fosse's "Star 80" and "If Looks Could Kill."
Television credits include "The West Wing," "Boston Common," "My So-Called Life" and more. This winter he will co-direct, with Alex Timbers, Peter and the Starcatchers at the New York Theatre Workshop.
Based on the bizarre family of characters created by legendary cartoonist Charles Addams, The Addams Family features a book by Marshall Brickman and Rick Elice, and music and lyrics by Andrew Lippa. The production is directed and designed (sets and costumes) by Phelim McDermott and Julian Crouch, with creative consultation by Jerry Zaks and choreography by Sergio Trujillo.
The musical opened on Broadway April 8, 2010, and has been one of the highest-grossing Broadway titles of the past nine months. A national touring company will premiere in New Orleans in September 2011.
For more information, visit www.theaddamsfamilymusical.com.
