When it comes to romantic tunes, Brian Stokes Mitchell loves it simple, loves it old. Mostly, he loves the space to set his musical imprint.

"I especially love the songs of the '30s and the '40s," he said from Pasadena, Calif., one of his stops before heading to the Islands to be one of the headliners in "The Most Romantic Songs Ever Written, Part I," a centerpiece of the Return to Romance festival.

"The most beautiful songs come from that era," said Mitchell, 49, a Seattle-born star of Broadway, the concert stage, TV and more.

"Melodies are so incredibly beautiful and timeless and so wonderfully constructed. Lyrics are generally simple, which I love, but deep; and the songs are covered by a million different artists.

"I love haiku poetry, which says the most with a minimal output; there's brevity, but a lot is said. A song is like that, and I love songs that allow the artist to fill the spaces — or what I call spaces — and that's the place between the notes. As an artist, you can provide the brush strokes, so it's important to understand and value the space."

A star of the Broadway stage, where he earned a Tony Award for "Kiss Me, Kate" (in which he portrayed Frank Graham/Petruchio), and nominations for "Ragtime" (as Coalhouse Walker Jr.), "Kiss of the Spider Woman" (Valentin) and "Man of La Mancha" (Don Quixote/Cervantes), Mitchell also enjoys the opportunity to put his stamp on a role.

"When you step into a role that's created by someone else, it's different yet same as when you're a singer reinterpreting a song," he said. "Sometimes, like 'Ragtime,' it's a role hardly seen before, though the character has existed in a book or a film. With 'Jelly's Last Jam,' a show on Jelly Roll Morton, the show itself was original, and I was a replacement, so from an actor's point of view, you still have a sense that the material existed, but you have to re-create it from scratch, finding the truth with your own voice.

"The challenge of 'La Mancha' was that it features a song that's truly one of the most famous, since everyone has heard 'The Impossible Dream' in so many different ways, and try to create a new way that nobody has heard, or remind people why the some became a hit."

Mitchell has had a wide range of TV roles on series such as "Crossing Jordan," "Frasier" and "The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air."

Mitchell — his friends call him Stokes — also was cast as Duke Kahanamoku in "Too Rich: The Secret Life of Doris Duke," a 1999 TV movie partly filmed in Ho-nolulu, for which the production company got some flak because the non-Hawaiian Mitchell was playing a Hawaiian.

"I heard about (the controversy), on my first day of filming, when I was getting out of the shower, hearing my name on the radio," he recalled. "People wanted to talk to me; I think it was Brickwood (Galuteria, who was a morning radio jock), and for me, the problem was with a lack of understanding about what was going on. ... It was an honor for me to play him, and I wanted to honor his spirit.

"There's much value in people keeping their own folklore in their own image, their own language; they will guard and protect this, and I respect that."

Mitchell said Hawai'i is one of his favorite destinations; his wife and 3-year-old son will be here with him. "There's a spirit there that makes me feel like I'm home. But then again, I was raised in Guam and the Philippines; my childhood was spent near an ocean. I think that's why I feel so much at home when I come to Hawai'i."

Reach Wayne Harada at wharada@honoluluadvertiser.com.