The Royal Shakespeare Company's new production of Chekhov's The Cherry Orchard, featuring Hollywood stars Helen Hunt, Bill Pullman and Kenneth Branagh, has received a lukewarm review from the Guardian's critic despite its high-profile casting. Directed by Tamara Harvey and adapted by Laura Wade from a translation by Helen Rappaport, the production is criticised for lacking dramatic sparkle, with its soft-edged tone and ensemble approach failing to give the story the emotional charge its themes of love, loss and social upheaval demand.

The staging, at the Swan Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon, sees aristocratic siblings Ranyevskaya (Hunt) and Gaev (Pullman) speak in American accents, while Branagh's Lopakhin, a shopkeeper's son who ultimately buys the family estate, adopts a Northern Irish accent alongside servant Yasha, a choice the reviewer finds unclear in purpose. Branagh's performance is described as amiable but lacking the sharper class anger seen in a previous, more acclaimed Donmar Warehouse version, while Hunt's Ranyevskaya is called "featureless." Bright spots include Michael Elwyn's comic turn as manservant Firs and Anna Fleischle's atmospheric set design, but overall the review judges the production "woolly in meaning."