Calderón de la Barca’s La Vida es sueño (Life is a Dream) is a great masterpiece of Spain’s 17th-century Golden Age of drama sometimes referred to — for its fame and importance rather than its plot — as “the Spanish Hamlet”. It is not as well known in Britain as it ought to be, though a much-lauded production four years ago at the Donmar Warehouse, starring Dominic West, helped to change that.

Next week in Oxford its profile will be further raised when it is staged by a predominantly student group at the Playhouse. Performances will be in Spanish, with English surtitles.

This is the most ambitious production yet from a group calling itself The Oxford Spanish Play. It follows 2011’s inaugural venture with Lope de Vega’s La Dama Boba (Lady Nitwit) in Merton College Gardens and last year’s Un Marido de ida y vuelta (Comings and Goings) by 20th-century playwright Enrique Jardiel Poncela at The Queen’s College. The directors are husband and wife Teresa Flórez and Luis Orellana, who set up their theatre company in their native Chile in 1997 and have been involved with the stage ever since. Teresa promises a night of compelling drama. “It is a play full of ambiguous elements. The plot has surprises.” One of them, she says, is an ending that will not be expected even by those familiar with the story.

Life is a Dream focuses on the young Prince of Poland, Segismundo, who is hidden away in a tower by his father, King Basilio, after it is prophesied that his heir will bring disaster to the realm. When his hiding place is accidentally uncovered, Basilio decides to bring him to the palace for a day, drugged and in secrecy, to test the validity of the prophecy. If it begins to come true, Basilio intends to return him to the tower, drugged again, where he will be led to believe that everything he experienced at court was a dream.

“Within this framework,” as the company explains in its exceptionally useful website (oxfordspanishplay.com) “unfolds a tale of love, honour, fate, and rebellion as events cause the characters to question the boundaries between fantasy and reality, predestination and free will.”

A crucial role is taken in the action by a travelling Russian noblewoman called Rosaura, a character played by Worcester College biochemistry student Ekaterina Spivakovsky Gonzales. She finds hidden Segismundo and encounters him again at the palace. In both cases she is in disguise.

Ekaterina says: “She has a lover who decides to travel from the court of Moscow to Poland when he finds out there is a possibility of making a claim to the throne. Rosaura knows she must follow him, and either kill him, or marry him.” Serious stuff — though comic relief is supplied by Clarin, her vassal and travelling companion.

Ekaterina’s full name, incidentally, accurately suggests parentage both Spanish and Russian. For good measure, a significant period of her upbringing was spent in Toronto.

Director Teresa is keen we highlight the international nature of the production. “There is a varied group involved, not just people from Spain or Oxford language students. One of the actors is Russian and others are from the US, Mexico, France and Italy.”

She is confident the play’s richly poetic language will be savoured by all hearing it, whether they understand the words or not. While the progress of the story will be clearly charted in the surtitles, the mood of the play will be reflected in a very specific visual tone to the production.

The directors say: “We have chosen to focus on the way in which Segismundo’s illusions and ruminations lead us to a world which lacks limits between appearance and reality. “We have opted for a non-realistic approach in which all we know is that the plot happens in a different and distant space and time, where the atmosphere of a dream permanently surrounds the audience.”

Costumes, music and make-up — as can be seen in the photographs on this page — play a significant part in achieving this effect.

From Wednesday to Saturday Box office: 01865 305305 (oxfordplayhouse.com)