Helena Wilson and Maggie Bain in Linck & Mülhahn
(Picture: Helen Murray)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.
It mashes up formal period speech and modern slang and sensibilities. 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. Though the story and ideas should be compelling, the arch tone of Owen Horsley’s production, and some panto-style acting in the supporting cast, keep us at arm’s length.
Anastasius Linck was assigned female gender at birth but became a soldier, a tradesman and husband to Catharina Mülhahn. When they were prosecuted for sodomy in 1721, Mülhahn claimed she’d been tricked by Linck and escaped with a three-year sentence. Linck was executed by sword, as befitted a male soldier, rather than by burning, the punishment for a woman: proof that the authorities couldn’t pin down what, precisely, offended them about the couple, at a time when religious certainties were also shifting.
Thomas reimagines the relationship as a great queer romance and a riposte to the patriarchy. Maggie Bain’s enigmatic Linck is “neither man nor woman” but a suave and witty quipster with polished bedroom skills. Helena Wilson’s Mülhahn – the better, showier part, because Thomas had total freedom to invent it – is a proto-feminist who threatens to crap on her mother’s floor in order to avoid a foolish suitor and disputes the authority of the judge hearing her case.
She decides – groan – to become a writer while living in connubial poverty with Linck. Thomas also provides framing scenes in which a character called the Spinster (apparently an older Mülhahn) argues it’s an author’s duty to fashion new truths as orthodoxies change.
This self-aggrandising stuff might be easier to take if Thomas’s own script weren’t so erratic. 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”. Though they subsequently talk about the wild passion they share, we never feel it.
The script is full of witty lines and clever-dickish references to Locke, Leibniz and Descartes, all sprayed around at random. Characters irritatingly state the obvious: “Your shirt! You have removed it!” The plot swerves into cul-de-sacs involving Mülhahn’s mother and a comically gurning servant. Irrelevant asides and some truly dreadful acting derail the Courtroom scene that takes up much of the second half.
There’s enough zesty life in Wilson’s Mülhahn, and enough beady steel in Bain’s Linck to keep you watching. But the whole thing is too gimmicky and too self-conscious in its juxtaposition of different eras to really work. At one point, Linck, working as a cloth maker, picks up a scrap of shoddy fabric and says: “One loose thread and the whole thing unravels.” It’s a metaphor for religion, gender and conventional morality, but an unfortunate one in a play full of stray threads.
Hampstead Theatre, to 4 Mar; hampsteadtheatre.com
