Living in an academic bubble like Brandeis, it's often easy to forget to look at the outside world and see just how little things have changed. Fashion, technology, music and art all shift and evolve and overlap, but the template of human emotion and interaction remains intact throughout. Perhaps the best example of this is the persistence of human relationships, and the tragedy and injustice that surrounds them. Serving to illustrate this point is the Brandeis Theater Company's production of The Physician of His Honor, which opened this weekend on the Spingold Mainstage and runs through Sunday.Written in the 1600s by Pedro Calderon de la Barca, the play explores the ethics and ideas surrounding the "honor code" that pervaded the social hierarchy of 14th-century Spain, and eerily echoes modern society. It is through this code that the actions of the characters and the events of the play find their meaning, as each individual obsessively strives to maintain honor and social standing. The play garnered quite a bit of controversy when it was first written, as it criticized the social system that still dominated Calderon's Spain.

The plot focuses on Don Gutierre de Solis (Robert Serrell, GRAD) as he frantically seeks to defend his honor under the suspicion that his wife is having an affair. The story begins as the hopelessly romantic Prince Enrique (Kara Manson '08) is rushed into Gutierre's home, injured after falling from his horse. We soon learn Enrique and Gutierre's wife, Dona Mencia (Rebecca Weber '08) were once lovers. The rest of the play follows Enrique's attempts to pursue Dona Mencia, and the impact their love has on the honor of others. Presiding over all the events, with impressively terrifying vocal authority, is Prince Enrique's brother, King Pedro of Castile (Anthony Mark Stockard, GRAD).

Throughout the story, strict social rules dictate many of the events, eventually culminating in Gutierre choosing a violent solution to protect his honor. Even the King, despite his own compassions, is bound to make decisions based on the honor code.

Co-directed by Prof. Eric Hill, the theater department's chair, and the Argentina-based director and playwright Monica Vinao, The Physician of His Honor is expertly produced. Particularly worthy of note is the set, which utilizes an ever-changing projected background and numerous sound effects and music to craft an especially evocative atmosphere.

King Pedro and Coquin the Jester (Matthew Crider '09) provide a great deal of entertainment and comic relief in an otherwise serious production. The translations of the original text, by Prof. Dian Fox (ROCL), occasionally seemed overdramatic and overbearing, causing some of the scenes to drag under their own weights.

Yet this minor complaint is barely relevant in the face of the show's poignant message. The play successfully points out what Hill calls "the consequences that arise when codes become the excuse for expanding upon human behavior that's not particularly socially acceptable." With the play's frightening conclusion, the audience is reminded, disturbingly, of the similar restrictions and injustices that still occur throughout the world. If a 400-year-old play can still parallel our actions today, the production seems to ask, how far have we really come?