Linck & Mülhahn

Product Information

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. But the whole thing is too gimmicky and too self-conscious in its juxtaposition of different eras to really work. 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.

Faber Members get access to live and online author events and receive regular e-newsletters with book previews, promotional offers, articles and quizzes. Fist-clenching activists may be happy enough; the rest of us are left starved of subtlety and insight. Thomas’ play tries to encourage us to go beyond initial impressions to appreciate one’s fine, inner being, but I am only left enjoying this production in a wider, general sense, with the deeper ideas not quite shining through. When they were prosecuted for sodomy in 1721, Mülhahn claimed she’d been tricked by Linck and escaped with a three-year sentence.From Gentleman Jack to Orlando, the queer costume drama has been pushing debates around gender and sexuality into the mainstream in the disguise of rollicking good fun. One moment we have a tender domestic scene, the next we are in comic absurdist territory with a courtroom whose judge could have been written by Peter Cook. Our autumn/winter season celebrates Hampstead’s cosmopolitan roots with a range of international playwrights from Scotland to the USA, Northern Ireland to France and some great homegrown talent in between. Disclaimer: I was invited to watch ‘Linck and Mülhahn’ for free in exchange for a review of the performance as a member of the press. He’s almost as bilious as some of the Hampstead’s patrons, who habitually barge past you en route to their seats.

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. Owen Horsley directs at Hampstead for the first time; his credits for the RSC include the recent double bill of Rebellion and Wars of the Roses, as well as Maydays and Salomé. Bain, who is non-binary, released a video statement on Instagram addressing some of these concerns, and Hampstead offered free preview tickets to trans and queer individuals who wanted to see the show but couldn’t afford a ticket. It follows her two sell out successes for Hampstead Downstairs: 2022’s The Animal Kingdom (‘pure theatre’ – The Guardian) and 2019’s Either (‘marks Ruby Thomas out as a daring and exciting new voice’ – The Arts Desk).

Please note that our content warnings evolve as the production does throughout rehearsal and previews, so there may be changes made between booking and attending the theatre.