Linck & Mülhahn

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Anastasius Linck boldly renounces skirts and embroidery in favour of living as a man, and Catharina Mulhahn's own act of bravery is to love and marry him, slipping their relationship right under the noses of their narrow-minded neighbours. They will be joined by Daniel Abbott, David Carr, Marty Cruickshank, Kammy Darweish, Qasim Mahmood, Leigh Quinn and Timothy Speyer. The contemporary resonance is startling; by pointing this out in dogged, explicatory speeches, Thomas muffles the impact. Imaginatively reverse-engineered from a historic trial document, Ruby Thomas’s tale of a couple who pioneered gender flexibility in 18th century Prussia is, ultimately, a bit of a mess. They are joined by Daniel Abbott , David Carr, Marty Cruickshank, Kammy Darweish, Qasim Mahmood, Leigh Quinn and Timothy Speyer.

For all its spirit, there's something old school embedded into the structure of Thomas's play that director Owen Horsley's furious blasts of the Sex Pistols between scenes can’t shake off. The romantic sparring between the lovers is as clipped and ironic as that of any Noel Coward couple, but Linck agrees to Mülhahn’s suggestion they marry with the words, “F*** it, let’s do it”. But Thomas's big innovation here is to pull out and imagine all the fun, creativity and joy behind the stark historical court transcript that inspired this play. The title of Ruby Thomas’s play suggests some kind of cringey comedy double act, but the reality is weightier, stranger and sexier than that. Dashing soldier Anastasius Linck has no intention of falling in love, but a chance encounter with the rebellious Catharina Mülhahn changes everything.

Maggie Bain ( Man to Man, Wales Millennium Centre; Henry V, Shakespeare’s Rose Theatre) plays the role of Anastasius Linck with Helena Wilson ( Jack Absolute Flies Again, National Theatre; The Lady from the Sea, Donmar) playing the role of Catharina Mülhahn and Lucy Black ( The Durrells, ITV; The Haystack, Hampstead Theatre) playing Mother. And the closing attempt to imagine a different future feels unearned, and tonally disjointed from what's gone before. Faber Members get access to live and online author events and receive regular e-newsletters with book previews, promotional offers, articles and quizzes. Scene changes on Simon Wells’ stark, revolving set – of a staircase, a landing and a wall – are accompanied by jarring bursts of rock music including The Sex Pistols and The Clash. Unlike Hampstead theatre, which, stripped of its grant last year, has just put on the most exhilarating play I’ve seen there for ages.

It follows her two sold-out plays for Hampstead Downstairs: The Animal Kingdom ('pure theatre’ – The Guardian) and Either (‘marks Ruby Thomas out as a daring and exciting new voice’ – The Arts Desk). Take, for instance, Lucy Black’s permanently aghast Mother, who is brilliantly funny in her fragility and her shock at even the slightest deviation from the norm. But the whole thing is too gimmicky and too self-conscious in its juxtaposition of different eras to really work. These meagre but glinting spokes form the basis of Ruby Thomas's freewheeling reconstruction, which casts Anastasius not as a lesbian but as neither woman nor man.Linck is all cocky confidence: poignantly, the moment he finally starts to show Mulhahn his vulnerability is the moment when men storm in with the inevitable arrest warrant.

This play's relentless enthusiasm for turning tragedy into comedy founders in the second half, when Linck’s fight for his life turns into a grating courtroom farce packed with the buffoonish antics of various bewigged gentlemen. Swapping a non-binary Joan of Arc for a Prussian male-presenting musketeer entering a relationship with a woman, the tale about the “gender pioneering couple” Anastasius Linck (Maggie Bain) and Catharina Mülhahn (Helena Wilson) is bold and clever, but only on the surface. Based on real events and characters, Ruby Thomas’s play is a rapier-sharp historical romp, festooned with sparkling dialogue, that ultimately draws blood and tears. Wilson’s sparky, self-deprecating Mülhahn completes the two-hander, whose enthusiastic embrace of the philosophies of love is endearing, and echoed with tragic reflection from Mülhahn’s older self (Marty Cruikshank). It’s a sprawling tragi-comic love story that explores contemporary issues around sex, gender and the violent oppression of people whose lives do not conform to narrow societal expectations.

Officers whore in the back streets, while the wilful Catharina (Helena Wilson) sits crossly against a wall of Simon Wells’s revolving acrylic set, listening to her life ticking loudly away. Consenting to these technologies will allow us to process data such as browsing behaviour or unique IDs on this site. Ruby Thomas’ epic and playful modern love story takes eighteenth century court records as its starting point.