The eyes don’t have it in North Coast Rep’s production of The Lion in Winter. The James Goldman potboiler, which was made into a rollicking movie starring Peter O’Toole and Katharine Hepburn, takes as its subject the matter of who will succeed Britain’s 12th Century King Henry II.

Henry, who controlled significant portions of the European continent through warfare, marriage (to Eleanor of Aquitaine) and diplomatic wile, compares himself negatively to King Lear and doesn’t want to follow Lear’s path and divide his holdings among his three sons. All involved have opinions about how Henry’s authority and kingdom should be passed down, and the political gamesmanship among the characters is what makes a good deal of fun out of what might otherwise have been a deadly history lesson.

But, to play political games well, you need soul. And if the eyes are the window to the soul, according to the well-worn proverb, there isn’t much soul going on in this production. Surely there is a lot of furious declaiming as a stand-in, but the eyes of most of the performers are dull and don’t sparkle.

Alas, the one whose eyes are dullest is San Diego veteran actor Kandis Chappell. Ms. Chappell, an Old Globe Associate Artist, has the requisite experience in classical theatre to pull off the central role of Eleanor, but her opening night performance never moved beyond competent.

Eleanor, whose relationship, with Henry (Mark Pinter) soured long ago, is confined to house arrest, and is called for only on occasions that demand the presence of the queen. She plots with the best of them, though, and whenever she gets a chance she loves to show off what she can do. In contrast to her character, however, Ms. Chappell plodded, rather than plotted, her way through a recitation of her lines, particularly in the long first act, and her performance had no sense of glee to it. By Act 2, she got her energy up, but by then it was too late to matter.

Ms. Chappell is featured enough in Act 1 that the other performances seemed to resonate on one note each. As Richard, Eleanor’s favorite to succeed Henry, Richard Baird found no emotion other than angry to play. Kyle Roche, as John, Henry’s favorite, got stuck in being ineffectual. Alexandra Grossi, as Alais, Henry’s mistress who is also beholden for political reasons to Richard, looked beautiful in the part but was trapped by sounding whiny and immature as a political plotter.

The two performers who came closest to what should work for this show appeared together in ion’s Theare’s recent production of Angels in America. In that production Kyle Sorrell played Prior, and Jason Maddy played Louis. Here, Mr. Maddy plays Geoffrey, the son who’s nobody’s favorite but his own. His eyes glistened as he plotted to be the power behind the throne, but it’s hard to overcome the fact that the playwright's path for his character leads to a dead end.

The one to watch, however, is Mr. Sorrell. In the small role of French King Phillip, his eyes exuded energy as he attempted to regain control of territory on the Continent that his father lost to Henry. Phillip has a secret, one that was undoubtedly far more shocking to playgoers in 1966 than it is today, and Mr. Sorrell’s eyes gave off just enough mystery to know that something was coming without telegraphing the surprise before it happened.

As Henry, Mr. Pinter tried to hold everything together by being larger-than-life. Mostly, he succeeded, but at the expense of exposing Ms. Chappell’s performance as only life-sized.

A fair amount of the production's problems resided with Andrew Barnicle’s direction. Mr. Barnicle kept things moving (his scene changes were timed nicely to recorded music, created by Chris Luessmann), but his staging of individual scenes was awkward. His characters spoke the text but not much of what was underneath it, and they treated the play as high art when it’s really an overblown romp that scores best when everyone’s in on the joke.

Many of Marty Burnett’s sets tend to look alike, and this one held no surprises. No surprises, either, from the rest of the competent technical work (Jason Bieber’s lighting, Renetta Lloyd’s costumes, and Annie Bornhurst’s props).

The Lion in Winter runs through February 5.

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