As the saying goes, "You can't judge a book by its cover." In the same way, if you thought the 28-year-old ikemen (drop-dead gorgeous) actor Junpei Mizobata had just been cast to fill seats for the upcoming staging of one of the world's most well-known but challenging modern plays, you'd be doing a great injustice to a great young talent.
That's because Mizobata will play a key role in Shintaro Mori's production of English playwright Harold Pinter's first box-office hit, 1960's tragicomic "The Caretaker," alongside Shugo Oshinari and Yoichi Nukumizu who play its two other characters.
Although Pinter (1930-2008) won a Nobel Prize for literature in 2005 for his body of work including such classics as "The Birthday Party" (1959), "The Dumb Waiter" (1960), "Betrayal" (1978) and "One for the Road" (1984), his plays are hardly ever performed in Japan despite being fixtures at theaters in Europe and North America.