‘Henry IV, Part Two’ continues game of thrones

It’s a sequel, not an equal.

Which probably explains why “Henry IV, Part Two” is so rarely produced.

So now’s your chance, Shakespeare completists, thanks to this year’s Utah Shakespeare Festival.

The connective tissue between the stirring “Part One” (which the Utah Shakespeare Festival presented last season) and the even more stirring “Henry V” (which continues the festival’s ambitious history cycle next season), “Part Two” may not be top-tier Shakespeare.

But it’s still Shakespeare — and it still explores fascinating questions of identity and destiny facing the future Henry V.

In “Part Two,” he’s still Prince Hal (embodied by the jaunty yet haunted Sam Ashdown, who returns to the role he first played last season). And he’s still torn between two father figures battling for control of his soul.

The first, of course, is King Henry IV (Larry Bull, poignantly reflecting the dying of the light as he reprises the role he first played in 2013’s “Richard II”). If he’s plagued by a mysterious illness, he’s plagued even further by the state of his kingdom, “a bleeding land gasping for breath.”

No wonder he’s concluded that “uneasy lies the head that wears the crown.”

Someday, perhaps all too soon, Prince Hal will wear that crown.

Assuming he can tear himself away from an altogether more appealing father figure: the perpetually soused scamp Sir John Falstaff (irrepressible, irresistible John Ahlin).

Understandably, Falstaff would rather carouse at the Boar’s Head Tavern with the aptly named Doll Tearsheet (Saren Nofs-Snyder) than march north to fight for the king yet again.

But Hal senses that his days of drinking, carousing and otherwise following in Falstaff’s footsteps may be numbered — altering not only his trajectory but England’s.

This production emphasizes the play’s continuing-saga aspects. Tattered banners hang from Vicki M. Smith’s hall-of-kings set at the beginning of “Part Two,” reminding us of “Part One’s” furious battles.

Speaking of battles, director Brian Vaughn envelops the stage in a literal fog of war, giving “Part Two’s” relatively limited action a ghostly dimension.

Sometimes it feels as though it’s the ghost of “Part One,” reminding us of this “Henry’s” more vigorous predecessor.

It’s not Vaughn’s fault, of course, that there’s such an imbalance in the play. Falstaff’s all-too-human adventures possess an emotional depth and impact largely missing from the machinations of King Henry, his allies and enemies.

Until the inevitable, heart-piercing moment when Prince Hal acknowledges that, however uneasy it may make him, his is the head that must wear the crown — and make it his own.

Exactly how he does that we’ll see next season in “Henry V.” For now, “Henry IV, Part Two” proves a relatively compelling transitional chapter.

— CAROL CLING