Review: The Cherry Orchard at ASB Theatre, Aotea Centre

Wry comedy is offered from Ethan Hawke (left) and Sinead Cusack.

Oh yes, we had great expectations - how could we not? The Bridge Project offers canonical plays interpreted by glamorously famous acting talent from both cultural capitals of the anglophone world - New York and London - under the direction of American Beauty's Sam Mendes.

So what makes them worth flying in? It's their unusual poise, definition and assurance; their nuanced performances support rather than distract from the complexity of Chekhov's 1904 classic study of social upheaval. Portraying characters who are both likeable and infuriating - and who move from complicated psychology to flat symbolism in the chop of an axe - the 18-strong ensemble is impressive.

In particular, Simon Russell Beale is excellent, giving Lopakhin the proto-capitalist former peasant a slight soupcon of The Office's David Brent.

This fresh, entertaining version of the Russian play, by the iconic Tom Stoppard (Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead), emphasises the play's wry comedy and prophetic political savvy. Instead of paying off debts to save her family estate - and the eponymous orchard - Madame Ranevskaya (played by Sinead Cusack as sweetly vivacious and rather empty-headed) continues as she has always done, mortgaging the future to continue the party.

With two effective exceptions, the play is staged relatively conventionally, but that is a ruse: Mendes is eager to shake the audience up.

When proto-Bolshevik "eternal student" Trofimov (an occasionally muffled-sounding Ethan Hawke, who squashes his matinee idol swoon potential by fulfilling his character's "mangy" description) declares to his aristocratic sweetheart Anya that her life is made possible through the work of people she wouldn't even let through her door, he's also talking over the ingenue's head directly to the stalls.

The use of colour in costume is superlative: family members wear their state of mind on their sleeves in various cherry-echo shades.

Minor quibbles include a few swallowed phrases and Chekhov's habit of telling rather than showing characters' histories.

But this big-deal production is the real deal. Expectations met.