Summary 
An elegant if awkward staging of the difficult romance, thematically lurching from fairy tale to tragedy to melodrama to pastoral musical and back to fairy tale. The first act jealousy and reflexive anger is staged in black-and-white 1904, with the redemptive second act set sixteen years later among the colorful flower-children of Bohemia. A moving conclusion brought about by magic, but a schizophrenic structure that shifts in fits and starts rather than as elements of a unified whole.
Design
Directed by Barbara Gaines. Set by Michael Philippi. Costumes by Nan Zabriskie. Lights by James Ingalls. Sound by Robert Neuhaus. Original music by Kevin Gudahl. Choreographed by Jim Corti.
Cast
Paris Alexander Schutz (Mamillius), Fredric Stone (Camillo/Dion), Sam Tsoutsouvas (Leontes), Peter Aylward (Polixenes), Lisa Dodson (Hermione), Patrick Clear (Cleomenes), Tom Daugherty (Archidamus), Michael Weber (Antigonus), Cheryl Lynn Bruce (Paulina), Kevin Gudahl (Jailor/Officer/Autolycus), James Fitzgerald (Young Clown/Time), Scott Parkinson (Florizel), Starina Catchatoorian (Perdita).
Analysis
Barbara Gaines takes a two-toned, almost schizophrenic approach to directing The Winter's Tale, presenting the difficult text in contrasting halves, with the first-act Othello-like spasms of jealousy and the second act a kind of Jacobean Godspell with bohemian music, singing, and dancing. The first act opens with young Mamillius singing Autolycus' "Jog On" song while clutching a big white stuffed bear, then shaking a small snow globe to magically summon a larger snow-globe fairy tale for his mother, Hermione. A gentle snowfall graces the stark black-and-white set, with its Sicilia in a snowy white shroud that covers the stage and most of the walls, but with gleaming, reflective black panels upstage. The time is 1904, the costumes conservative and old-fashioned in sharp black and textured cream, and the imagery seems to emerge from Mamillius' fairy-tale snow globe: Leontes and Polixenes wage a laughing snow fight upstage while an obviously pregnant Hermione watches adoringly from downstage center, and soon Leontes joins her, embracing her from behind and gently touching her swollen belly. The quiet intimacy of the moment is belied by the distant rumble of thunder and quick flashes of lightning, and when Polixenes joins Hermione downstage - for what appears to be an innocent and friendly moment - the mood dramatically changes. Polixenes and Hermione suddenly freeze in mid-motion, and Leontes is literally and figuratively captured within a harsh white spotlight upstage, staring and seething with suspicion and barely restrained rage.
Leontes' jealousy and potential violence emerge with a frightening suddenness from nowhere, lending the fairy tale a dark and dangerous edge. Leontes alternates in spasms from stoically posed civility to increasingly frequent bouts of fury, staggering across the stage with his fists clenched, hunching over in torturous grief, and letting anger fly in tormented screams. The darkness of the story spirals with quick steps toward tragedy with Leontes' accusations against his wife, his denial of the oracle as "mere falsehood," and especially his sending away of his son Mamillius, who seems to represent onstage a younger and more innocent part of himself. Leontes, his hands balled into fists, makes the final judgment against his newborn daughter while barefoot and contorted, his manner animalistic and his tone bombastic.
Gaines then shifts the tone of the production to a courtroom melodrama, anchoring it with a portrayal of Hermione as physically frail but emotionally steadfast. Hermione clutches a wooden railing and bravely faces her center stage accuser, demonstratively finishing Leontes' sentences even though she is unable to walk or even stand on her own. Sliding toward delirium, Hermione makes impassioned pleas for understanding and mercy, looking very weak with long dark hair framing her pale face, and she reaches out to Leontes. In a finely realized turning-point moment, Leontes reaches back toward his wrongly accused wife, then wrenches himself away, tragically choosing jealousy and vindictive anger. When Hermione finally collapses in a faint at Leontes' feet, he staggers away and collapses himself, slumping behind a cage-like set piece and gripping its bars as if imprisoned. Moments later, Gaines again shifts the tone, transitioning away from highly-charged and hyper-emphatic melodrama back to snow-globe fairy tale with the jarringly comical image of Antigonus abandoning the infant Princess Perdita in the wilderness: "exit, pursued by a bear."
Gaines presents the sixteen-year-fast-forwarded second act as a Bohemian musical. Now 1920, the lighting and costumes shift from the stiff black-and-white formality of Leontes' Sicilia to the warm and sunny glow of Polixenes' Bohemia. Flower-laden banners are unfurled upstage as a dozen dancers shout and twirl, their comfortable clothes loose-fitting and colorful, replete with scarves, veils, vests, billowing long sleeves, and strapped-on sandals. Most of the men are bearded and most of the women have their long hair in braids. Kevin Gudahl, who also wrote the original music, portrays Autolycus as a pick-pocketing rascal and wandering minstrel: he plays a guitar, a harmonica, and a mandolin as a bravura one-man band, singing with a pair of leg-kicking Bohemian maidens, encouraging the others to dance and clap along. Mid-song, Gudahl slyly halts and gestures to the flowers behind him before acknowledging the audience - "welcome to the forest!" - then continuing his light and buoyant tune.
After an appearance by Time - as a sweater-clad college fraternity man culled right from The Great Gatsby - Gaines moves the action back to Leontes in Sicila. With the white drape removed, the black upstage walls sharply and elegantly reflect lighting as a subdued and chastened Leontes plays chess with Cleomenes, his banter with Paulina about the "perfect woman" nicely counterpointed by the previous scenes between Perdita and Florizel. Paulina is portrayed as a connective character as well as Leontes' conscience ("will you swear/Never to marry, but by my leave?"), something of a priestess with her first-act delivery of the oracle's letter, and later, an almost earth-mother remembrance of wife-and-child and forgiveness. Her "sculpture" of Hermione unites the thematic strands of the play and brings about the happy fairy-tale ending. Leontes, still formally attired but now in a creamy white tuxedo complete with ivory bow tie, approaches the supposed statue of Hermione with a subtle sense of longing and remorse - and acknowledgement of culpability - that is ironically more evocative than his first-act histrionics. When Hermione, in a flowing cream gown and her dark hair concealed by a white turban, and Perdita are revealed to him in the miracle, Leontes collapses in tears to Hermione's feet much as she had done before him when wrongly accused. The matching movements of submission lend even more poignancy to a touchingly staged family reunion.
While the stylistic transitions can be awkward - at times the production feels like a cobbled together collection of vaguely related set-piece scenes - this remains an impressively crafted production, one part elegant family drama, one part flower-child musical, bound together with the sensibility of a fairy tale.