The opening song snippet from "Oh What a Lovely War" sets you up for what kind of "Henry V" this will be. "O for a muse of fire" be damned. The San Francisco Shakespeare Festival's 2012 Free Shakespeare in the Park offering tries to turn the Bard's old nationalist warhorse into an antiwar drama.

Not that that's necessarily a bad thing. Shakespeare filled his celebration of England's war-hero king with material about the grisly and gritty hardships of battle. Many directors have used that either to leaven the play's heavy-handed militaristic nationalism - Henry invades and pretty much conquers France, remember - as Kenneth Branagh did in the best of his Shakespearean films, or to make the play a strong antiwar statement.

That's a hard task, given the potent poetry of Shakespeare's calls to arms ("Once more unto the breach," "We few, we happy few, we band of brothers"). Some directors have made it work reasonably well; some have failed. Few, however, have managed, as Kenneth Kelleher has, to make much of the play seem merely dreary.

Not all of it. Kelleher has a strong lead in Craig Marker's boyishly thoughtful man of action. He brings out the undertones of the later scenes when Henry visits with his exhausted troops on the eve of the Battle of Agincourt. And he has a delightful Maggie Mason to light up the stage as the French princess Katherine.

But those moments are few and far between. As seen in the Bay Area-wide touring program's first visit to Redwood City (it plays the Presidio next month), the first act is a pretty long slog.

Kelleher gives us a modern dress "HV," in khaki costumes by Cassandra Carpenter that evoke World War I trench warfare on a set of weathered corrugated metal. A few colors relieve the drab visuals - clerical robes, French blue uniforms, the Union Jack - but for the most part the actors fade into a pallid landscape.

The director also punctuates the action with song snippets, sung by the cast between scenes - "When This Lousy War Is Over," "I Want to Go Home," "Conscientious Objector's Lament" - many in a gloomy tone accentuated by the drum, piano and harmonium accompaniment. That doesn't help build momentum in a play already stuffed with long narrative passages and that opens with tedious dissertations on Henry's right to the French throne.

Given how much Kelleher has cut the text, it's odd he didn't take a hatchet to more of the now esoteric politics and archaic humor. The usually well-spoken Jack Powell garbles some of the Archbishop of Canterbury's exposition on lineage. There's little humor, and consequently little interest, in the remnants of Falstaff's old gang, despite thoughtful work by Powell as Bardolph and Michael Ray Wisely as Pistol and Exeter.

It's Mason, doubling as their smart page, who brings the most life to the dialogue in those scenes. Just as she enlivens the stage as Katherine in her comic English lesson (with Michele Delattre as her maid) and her captivated titillation in the beguiling wooing scene with Marker.

For the rest, despite some fine work by Ryan Tasker and a few others, it's up to Marker to carry the action. When Henry rises to the occasion, as in his great speeches, Marker handles the verse beautifully. But his is a deeply conflicted, wary and even confused Henry. As is this production.

ALERT VIEWER Henry V: History play. By William Shakespeare. Directed by Kenneth Kelleher. Through Sunday. San Francisco Shakespeare Festival, Free Shakespeare in the Park, Sequoia Park High School, 1201 Brewster Ave., Redwood City. Sept 1-23, Main Post Parade Ground, Presidio, S.F. Two hours, 20 minutes. Free. (415) 558-0888.
