Academy award-winner Sam Mendes directs a formidable transatlantic company of actors in The Bridge Project's inaugural 2009 season, which pairs Tom Stoppard's new version of Chekhov's The Cherry Orchard with Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale. Simon Russell Beale, Sinéad Cusack, and Rebecca Hall from the UK; and Richard Easton, Josh Hamilton, and Ethan Hawke from the US star in Chekhov's daring, droll meditation on bourgeois materialism, followed by Shakespeare's magical testament to the follies of hasty judgment and the force of love as a means of reconciliation.