The Winter's Tale at the Aotea Centre

Sinead Cusack in The Winter's Tale. Photo / Supplied

Hard on the heels of the Auckland Festival, the city has been blessed with a taste of the world's finest theatre in the Bridge Project. It boasts the creme de la crème of trans-Atlantic acting talent convened under the inspiration of director Sam Mendes whose phenomenal career has been honoured with both an Academy Award and the Olivier Outstanding Achievement Award.

The Winter's Tale appealed to Mendes for the way it shows Shakespeare pushing the boundaries as he approached the end of his career and the production displays a boldness of interpretation that is matched by a meticulous attention to stage craft.

The fear of cuckoldry - something of an obsession throughout Shakespeare's work - is given free rein here as the Sicilian King Leontes denounces his blameless wife and is consumed by a fiercely psychotic paranoia.

In Simon Russell Beale's finely judged performance, the king's madness has the bizarre certainty of a lunatic who believes he is the only one who sees clearly. His paranoia is the product of an autocratic personality and this interpretation is given a modern twist by turning the courtiers into officious bureaucrats whose obsequious demeanour serves only to increase the king's separation from reality.

Rebecca Hall as the wronged Queen Hermione delivers a heartrending plea for justice that brilliantly evokes the pathos of innocence crushed by the pitiless authority of a military tribunal. The resolute defiance of tyranny is given powerful expression in Sinead Cusack's portrayal of Paulina fearlessly speaking the truth to power.

The second half of the play shakes off the grim suspicion of the Sicilian court and transports us to a surreal distortion of pastoral Bohemia - somehow transposed to a Mid-Western prairie.

The setting is a nice fit for the simple-minded goofiness of the upwardly-mobile sheep-herders hilariously played by Richard Easton and Tobias Segal, though the laughter leaves little room for the deep lyricism with which Florizel and Perdita declare their mutual passion.

Despite the uniform excellence of the supporting cast, Ethan Hawke stands out with a display of sheer charisma. As Autolycus - the freewheeling prince of thieves - he appears as a dangerously cool, Dylanesque balladeer and is in such fine voice that it is seems unfair to have his songs interrupted by the squawking yokels. Theatre at this level is a rare treat seize the opportunity.