`The Winter's Tale' never comes together.

Byline: PLAY REVIEW By Bob Keefer The Register-Guard

ASHLAND - The single offering by William Shakespeare is the least compelling of the four plays that opened last weekend at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival.

`A sad tale's best for winter,' the Bard wrote in this late romance. This is a sad tale indeed, as well as being occasionally gripping, funny and a treat to look at. But in the end, the show remains confused, unconvincing and not worth the time.

This is not entirely the fault of the production, which was directed by Libby Appel, the festival's soon departing artistic director. She did a bang-up ``Richard III'' last year.

The story in "The Winter's Tale" feels patched together from dramatic remnants, like a movie stitched together from pieces found on the cutting room floor that don't necessarily come from the same script.

King Leontes falls prey to gnawing jealousy of his loyal wife, Hermione, and his boyhood friend Polixenes, and orders him killed and her to prison. It's all wrapped up 16 years later when - well, when all the unlikely threads of tragedy and redemption come back together, sort of, in Bohemia.

You've got mistaken identities, sea voyages to strange lands and perfect melodramatic coincidence driving the plot. All this adds up to a storyline that is unrelentingly bleak in the opening half of the show and bizarrely and unsatisfyingly resolved in the second.

The Ashland production starts well, as black- and white-costumed dancers turn gracefully around a nearly monochrome set; the huge, spare background consists of trees reminiscent of a Harry Callahan photo. It's gorgeous.

As Hermione and Polixenes dance together and laugh, jealousy whispers to King Leontes' heart, and in a spectacularly cinematic scene, the dancers go into dreamy slow motion as the spotlighted and isolated king talks to the audience of his impossible jealousy.

But the show's weaknesses are apparent early on. William Langan as Leontes lacks sufficient gravity to convey the pure misery of the role. His Leontes doesn't sweat about the fact he's destroying his loyal family on what seems a whim.

We've all felt jealous at one time or another; Leontes' jealousy lacks the heart-gnawing suffering that is essential to the ailment, the wild swings between certainty and doubt.

Miriam Laube is more interesting as Hermione, bringing a bit of flair to what can be a pathetically thin character. And her magical resurrection at play's end - a challenge for any production of this play - comes off without a snicker.

Josiah Phillips, who was Cutler (`A one, a two, and you know what to do ...') in last year's `Ma Rainey's Black Bottom,' makes a splendidly cuddly Old Shepherd. And Christopher DuVal's roguish antics as Autolycus, the con man, threaten to steal the second half of the show. But even a charming con man can't support this `Winter's Tale' for three full hours.