BRANAGH’S AS YOU LIKE IT.
BRANAGH’S AS YOU LIKE IT. Branagh’s master stroke—I submit—is to set the play at a time and in a place where the action doesn’t fit. He sets it in the English colony in nineteenth century Japan. Nick got to see only a couple minutes before going out and said, “There’s going to have to be some ninjas.” And a couple minutes later there were ninjas. The effect of the setting was to disorient me as a viewer, and helped me accept that Arden was imaginary and surprising even though the landscape looked solid and familiar.