[In the following review of Terrence O'Brien's Henry V for the 2002 Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival, Klein praises Nance Williamson's excellent work as the Chorus, but otherwise finds the project “misguided” in its depiction of King Henry.]

Everyone knows that Shakespeare is summertime's No. 1 theatrical sport, but it's the comedies and tragedies, 28 in all, that leap to mind. Only the most intransigent devotee will miss the histories, which add up to seven.

For most of us, there is plenty of Shakespeare to go around without having to bone up on royal French and English genealogy, such study invariably involving an immersion in politics, in religion and in the military, for through the ages, nobility thrived on the glory and the spoils of warfare.

From the Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival's founding artistic director, Terrence O'Brien, comes this statement: “War is always relevant.” But it somehow lacks the power to persuade us that the most interesting and accessible festival in the metropolitan region should be drawn to Henry V, its first history play in 16 years.

Happily, often deliriously so, the festival has put an indelible imprint, on many productions, even on the impossible Titus Andronicus.

But on Henry, no.

Granted, it is impossible to resist the heady rendering of the famous line, “A little touch of Harry in the night” by the Chorus of the occasion, and Mr. O'Brien's staging does not stint on levity, the abandon and the accessibility that defines the festival's inimitable style. But the complexity of the title character—he is many shaded and conflicted, but he is not great—and the grave undercurrents of an imperfect play are out of reach here.

Traditionally played by one actor, the Chorus warms up the audience, eager to report news from the battlefield, sometimes with cannon fire as accompaniment, promising to take us to mighty places. And once the word is out that the scintillating Nance Williamson is the welcoming Chorus here, it's likely that haters of plays historical will flock to this one.

Talk of welcoming. “O for a muse of fire, that would ascend / The brightest heaven of invention,” is the Chorus' first utterance, and with that Ms. Williamson has you hooked. When Ms Williamson, wearing her black trenchcoat as if it were the must-have coat of summer, implores the audience (“On your imaginary forces work,” “Piece out our imperfections with your thoughts” and “Gently to hear, kindly to judge our play”), she lifts a problematical play to a universal statement about the mind's possibilities and theater's power to enliven them.

But then, Ms. Williamson radiates the generosity of spirit that lifts the company, one of those ineffable gifts possessed by some performers who are themselves possessed by the magic of theater.

Note too that Ms. Williamson makes a brief appearance as Montjoy, a French herald.

But when it comes to ripening a King Henry “into noble manhood,” the transformation is out of the hands of a Chorus. While Harrison Long evokes shades of the carousing Prince Hal of his former days, the actor relies on political savvy at the expense of substance and the inner turmoil of a man who is determined to hold onto honor in defiance of the seductiveness of war and power that could overtake his sense of responsibility. The affable side of Henry is perceptible; his monster side is either unconvincing or too well concealed.

Mr. Long and the flirtatious, bewildered and altogether winning Natasha Piletich as the French and French-speaking Princess Katherine are fun in their courtship scenes, in which neither much understands what the other is talking about. The festival's customary aura of fun, irreverence and musical anachronism is minimally effective here and the choreographed swordplay from the fight director Ian Marshall is overly extended, landing in a pretentious muddle.

It remains for the ever-dependable Chorus to tell us, at the very end, how the horror, the brutality of war was all for nothing, “confining mighty men / Mangling by starts the full course of their glory.”

With that, one can understand Mr. O'Brien's sense of the play's contemporary importance. But the director's concentration on an incompletely realized portrait of one man learning a painful lesson is misguided. Pageantry is a conventionally handy compensation for dramatic flaws, but the festival's resources do not encompass such essential embellishment. We must expend extra effort when Ms. Williamson commands us to “grapple your minds … work, work your thoughts.”