IT SEEMS as if this is US playwright Arthur Miller’s year in London theatre, with numerous productions currently running in the West End.

The real gem among them, though, will soon be on at The Yard theatre in Hackney Wick, a small venue with a growing reputation for innovatory work.

It’s currently in rehearsal for a production of Arthur Miller’s The Crucible, a classic of political theatre showing the terrifying consequences of one witch-hunt in Salem, Massachusetts, in 1692-93 while condemning another, that led by the infamous Joe McCarthy in the 1950s.

It is always a fiercely gripping work and this new production has an extra ingredient. Director Jay Miller has taken a very big, brave decision — the part of John Proctor, who perishes in the witch-hunt and who’s previously been played by the likes of Liam Neeson and Daniel-Day Lewis, goes to Caoilfhionn Dunne.

In a break from rehearsals, I talk with assistant director Charlotte Fraser and Dunne, who tells me that The Crucible is a play “you think you know but you find whole new depths. I don’t think I’d really appreciated how it was written and how clever Miller was when he wrote it.”

In some productions the married Proctor is the typical hero, his hubris being the fling he has with serving girl Abigail. Upright and principled, he horrifies himself by becoming what he despises: a hypocrite.

“I have to make an attempt to retain his humanity and to find the good in him,” Dunne says.

“There is his attempt to be good — he really wants that. Is there one flaw in him? Well, we all have doubt, of course. I think he carries self-loathing. Maybe he’s trapped in a marriage, with no way out.”

The Big Question is that this is the first time Proctor will have been played by a female. How does Dunne feel about that? “I have to play the human – to play their truth and try to disregard any idea of gender,” she says.

Yet Proctor is not just any male. He’s a pillar of the community, with a deep, dark secret – though it’s one his wife Elizabeth knows. In an early scene, he’s flirting with Abigail, although he’s made it clear that their love affair is over, yet it seems that Proctor is still charmed by her provocative  antics.

Dunne feels that he is quite amused by the girl “but only up till the point when he realises what’s happening. The notion of desire — and excitement — still exists and his greatest challenge is not giving in to it, as he did before. That desire doesn’t just end, it lingers.”

Two-thirds of the cast are women, with women playing men and vice versa, while others play their own gender and it’s inevitable, Fraser says, that audiences will see different dynamics in the John/Elizabeth and John/Abigail relationships.

“In the text, we’re told that John is a man but in performance we can see two women on stage,” she explains. “We’re not trying to avoid that. We’re encouraging the audience to see the different levels of identity in play, how slippery they are — interesting, given the contemporary conversation about identity.”

There’s a scene in the play where Proctor acts violently towards the maid Mary Warren. What, I wonder, will an audience make of this scene, enacted between two women? For Dunne, “it’s another take on seeing that kind of misogyny in a different body. It’s the same thing, it all comes from the same place.”

Fraser agrees: “It’s a knotty, complicated part and carries a lot of the play’s main ideas — forgiveness, reputation, shame — though Proctor’s sometimes been a simple portrait of ‘noble masculinity. Having Caoilfhionn, a brilliant female actor, in the role highlights John’s flaws. Should we forgive them? Do we forgive men their flaws more easily than women?”

The first performance of Miller’s masterpiece may have been in 1953 and its subject matter dates from the late 17th century but Dunne is clear about its relevance now.“You realise how universal it can be and how modern,” she stresses.

“What are the witches we create, every day? There’s definitely a modern resonance, in our ‘othering’ of certain people. Especially in times of social, economic and political upheaval, we always ‘other’ when we feel under threat.

“This happens to be set at a time when settlers are losing control. They’re under attack, feeling threatened. There’s a strong sense that they want to gain control.”

For Fraser, it’s a story about a small rural community, collapsing in on itself, “that turns to fiction to make sense of an incoherent world. This speaks to today’s confused politics.

“With our production, we’re asking what causes us to believe in fairytale promises, in the idea of the enemy, in easy fictions, rather than difficult facts.”

With first night looming, Dunne is clearly thrilled to be cast in the sex-switching role. “It’s going to be brilliant, something completely new – that’s why The Yard is there.

“I don’t think I’d have done it if I hadn’t been given this part. John is the gift.”

The Crucible runs from March 27-May 11, box office: theyardtheatre.co.uk