Life is a Dream, Donmar Warehouse, London

The full name of the author of Life is a Dream is Pedro Calderón de la Barca y Barreda González de Henao Ruiz de Blasco y Riaño. A few too many words in there, you might think, and that is also an obstacle to enjoying the play itself.

A gem of 17th-century Spanish drama, Calderón’s play is nonetheless rather too rhetorical for the modern ear and the plotting is pretty indigestible. But Jonathan Munby’s expert, beautifully acted production at the Donmar, with Dominic West in the lead, forges on through to find something rich and strange. On Angela Davies’s set, with its gold encrusted back wall, a curious dream-like drama unfolds that raises all manner of metaphysical and psychological questions.

At the heart of the play is Prince Segismundo, a prisoner not for what he has done, but for what he might do. His father, King of Poland, has read dire prophecies in the stars that Segismundo will grow up to be a tyrant. In order to outwit fate, he imprisons his son in a tower. The treatment turns the youth into a bestial creature. So when the father has a change of heart and gives Segismundo a trial run as monarch, it is not surprising that disaster ensues.

Segismundo behaves like an obnoxious rock star on tour. He throws his weight around, gropes one woman, tries to rape a second and throws a man off a balcony to his death. The king, dismayed, recages his son and informs him that his moment of glory was all a dream.

It’s a story that ponders the complex interplay between free will and fate. It also considers wise governance and the illusory nature of power. But as Segismundo tries to puzzle out his experience, it shifts a gear and, like Hamlet, questions the very nature of consciousness. This is beautifully caught in Helen Edmundson’s supple translation. “What does it mean,” asks Segismundo. “When dreams are life and life’s a dream?”

Dominic West is excellent as Segismundo: driven, disturbed, dangerous, he nonetheless cuts a piteous figure. There are fine performances, too, from Kate Fleetwood, Sharon Small and Rupert Evans, all embroiled in a complex sub-plot of honour and betrayal.

And when all the anguish, nobility and rhetoric gets a bit much, Lloyd Hutchinson provides comic relief as a plain-speaking servant. Meanwhile, the soldiers’ muskets, which must be 5ft long, are an entertainment in themselves.