AS HE LIKES IT BRANAGH TAKES SHAKESPEARE OUT OF MEN-IN-TIGHTS RUT.

Byline: DAVID KRONKE

>TV WRITER

At any given moment, the texts to three or four plays by William Shakespeare sit around Kenneth Branagh's home, notes scribbled into their margins as to how a film adaptation might be mounted.

Currently, "Macbeth" and "King Lear" are receiving such treatment.

The notes, Branagh explains, ask or answer the questions: "'What is the why of putting it on film? What does it offer that is different, that realizes different things from what theater can imagine? That becomes the acid test -- does it genuinely illuminate?

"That's what can lead you to a place or era," he concludes.

"Usually, it's a case of being able to raise the stakes."

Indeed, when Branagh tackles Shakespeare on film (and he has received three Oscar nominations for such efforts), he almost invariably shifts the story to another time or place: Only his first film, "Henry V," remained true to its roots. Subsequent films divined resonances elsewhere: His "Hamlet" fretted over the Russian monarchy of the 19th century; "Love's Labor Lost" was cheekily transformed into a 1939 movie musical; "Much Ado About Nothing" was subtly shifted north, from Sicily to Tuscany.

For his latest, the HBO production "As You Like It," Branagh has moved the action of yet another of Shakespeare's romantic comedies about mistaken identity to late-19th century Japan (there's even a sumo-wrestling sequence).

"For me," he says, "it was about landscape. It's about romantic love, for sure -- boy meets girl -- but it's about this thing that crops up in Shake-

spearean comedies, a trip into a strange place for a brief period of time that is transformative. Romance or intense emotions are expressed because of the brevity of the time."

He notes that Shakespeare didn't seem to be particularly interested in verisimilitude in the play, since he wrote a scene involving a lion attack. "There are none to be found in Warwickshire or France (where the play is traditionally thought to be based)," Branagh notes. "You can say, 'What was Shakespeare thinking -- a lion in rural England?' "

Bryce Dallas Howard, who plays Rosalind -- the cagey romantic interest -- says, "That's honestly what I love about this play ... that you can realize so many different interpretations because it is so many different things. It is a drama. It is a comedy. It is a romance."

Meanwhile, Branagh -- whose upcoming film is "Sleuth," with a screenplay by Nobel Prize winner Harold Pinter and starring Michael Caine and Jude Law in the role Caine played 35 years ago ("I'm trying to avoid using the word remake, but I guess I can't," the director drolly concedes) -- acknowledges that clever adaptations of Shake-

speare's works dragged into different eras have their positives and negatives.

"Usually they've had an inspired idea about how a particular scene or a particular character might be freshly illuminated by doing it," he notes. "But the problem is, you get two or three great moments in an interpretation, whereas the rest of the time the play's absolutely screaming, 'Let me out of the confines of this terrible period you've put me in!' That's the price that you pay."

Nonetheless, Branagh champions experimentation over earnestness. "I would rather have that than the other way, such as the (British TV) Shakespeare (productions) from the '70s and '80s, where the thought was, 'Hey, we're doing them all, regardless,' and with a phenomenal cast in many cases," he says.

"But they ended up being so safe because they were trying to be the Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval versions," he continues. "I'd rather have the crazy ones with three great moments and half a dozen places where you feel you need to leave the room."

David Kronke, [phone]

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www.insidesocal.com/tv

AS YOU LIKE IT

>What: Kenneth Branagh adapts Shakespeare's romantic comedy.

>Where: HBO.

>When: 9 p.m. Tuesday; also, 4 p.m. Saturday, 10:30 a.m. and midnight Aug. 29.

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2 photos

Photo:

(1 -- 2) Shakespeare's "As You Like It" is realized in 19th-century Japan, top, by director Kenneth Branagh, above, in a production airing on HBO.