Acclaimed in Japan for the last quarter of a century as a drama director, writer and actor, Hideki Noda is set to become a major player on the world stage from Jan. 31, when his "Red Demon" opens for a near-monthlong run at the famed Young Vic in London's West End.

Now 46, Noda has been at the forefront of Japanese contemporary theater since he was a student at the University of Tokyo in the 1970s. He was one of a small group of experimental directors who formed small theater companies of their own and were instrumental in triggering off a great flowering of drama, especially among young people, in what is popularly known as the shogekijo (small-scale theater) movement of the '80s. Not content to rest on the laurels of this cultural reform to which he has contributed so much, though, Noda has constantly striven to broaden his, and Japan's, theatrical horizons.

In 1992-93, he studied drama in London on a Monbusho (Culture Ministry) scholarship, and last summer he directed his first kabuki, "Togitatsu no Utare (Togitatsu's Revenge)" (see Aug. 22, 2001 review). This spring, he will rise to yet another challenge when, at the New National Theater in Tokyo, he will direct his first opera, Verdi's "Macbeth."