Hayley Atwell to swap roles with Jack Lowden in middle of Donmar's Measure for Measure

Hayley Atwell will take on “an amazing acting challenge”, swapping roles with co-star Jack Lowden during each performance of Shakespeare’s Measure For Measure.

In the new production at Donmar Warehouse, the pair will share the central parts of novice nun Isabella and scheming politician Angelo, who agrees to save her brother’s life if she will sleep with him.

It is thought to be the first major production to do this. Recent hit Mary Stuart saw Juliet Stevenson and Lia Williams alternate the lead roles on separate nights — but not during a single performance.

Donmar artistic director Josie Rourke, director of the show at the Covent Garden venue, said Atwell, who stars in Agent Carter, and Lowden would in some cases replay scenes speaking lines the other actor had already said.

“They will alternate roles on the same night,” said Rourke. “What the audience will see is scenes replayed with the gender shifted and therefore the power dynamic shifted.

“One of the ideas behind the production Is measuring our own standards against what happens when a man says something to when a woman says the same thing.”

She added that the actors were “really up for it because it is an amazing acting challenge. It’s probably one of the biggest flips in status you could do.”

Atwell, who was Peggy Carter in several Avengers films as well as the eponymous spin-off TV series, was recently seen in Dry Powder at the Hampstead Theatre after five years away from the stage. Lowden is best known for roles in the BBC adaptation of War And Peace and Dunkirk.

The play will move between the present day and the year it was written — 1604. Rourke said she expected to have her “wrists slapped for messing around with Shakespeare”. She was prompted by “this big moment of workplace politics and questions of power that we are going through. It’s the great Shakespeare play about an abuse of power”. It runs from September 28 to November 24.

Preceding it at the Donmar will be a production of Aristocrats, by Irish playwright Brian Friel, starring Elaine Cassidy. A stage adaptation of Muriel Spark's The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, starring Lia Williams, has already been announced.