Chicago's brat-pack Hal

Amid rumours that Newcastle has reviewed its fossil-fuel strategy, the RSC Complete Works season has called in the ensemble of the Chicago Shakespeare Theater to enact Henry IV's civil war, and the ascension of Prince Hal (Henry V) to the throne. Its ensemble perform these two plays with emotional boldness and flashes of assured theatricality. But it makes for a fleeting experience, in which the wider themes of this wide-ranging work - kingship, responsibility, time - are given little space to grow and take root.

Working with nothing more than a red square and a step, what the CST lack in set they make up for in energy, sprinting on and off stage down the aisles of the Swan with unstoppable urgency. One spearman knocked my pen from my hand. I didn't note his name.

Yet for all the speed, the production lacks direction. Part I begins and ends with King Henry, alone under red light as nightmarish voices course through his head.

But if this promises a concentration on the uneasiness of the head that wears the crown, David Lively's stolid and emotionally limited Henry does not deliver.

The king's foil in terms of status and conscience, Falstaff, is similarly uncomplicated. Greg Vinkler's performance delivers the laughs, but gives little glimpse of the monster of selfishness whose ideals must be rejected by the maturing Prince Hal.

As Hal, Jeffrey Carlson starts off well. Resembling the rebel in a Brat Pack movie, he is the model of the privileged malcontent, bathing in the easy devotion of Falstaff and his circle, punctuating his jokes with a nervous laugh that advertises the insecure boy within. Yet as Hal grows through war and his father's death, Carlson loses his way and bores us with histrionics.

Such bawling in place of acting is a common flaw among the exhilarated cast.

The set-pieces, however, consistently hit the mark. The battle scene is excellent, and the Welsh song at the halfway point of Part One has been extended into a moment full of love and mutual understanding that mocks the ambitions of the warring nobility.

The Complete Works Festival: Henry IV Parts I And II