Linck & Mülhahn

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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. Disappointingly, though, these metaphors and symbolisms are left for the audience to entertain, rather than being investigated or explained in detail by Linck. 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.

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. From Nobel Laureates Samuel Beckett and Harold Pinter to theatre greats Tom Stoppard and Alan Bennett to rising stars Polly Stenham and Florian Zeller, Faber Drama presents the very best theatre has to offer. Like I, Joan, Thomas’s expansive play reframes historical drama, reminding us that there are countless untold stories of queer love and gender nonconforming throughout history. There’s enough zesty life in Wilson’s Mülhahn, and enough beady steel in Bain’s Linck to keep you watching.Most of the nuances and ambiguities have been ironed out; this is history as viewed through the prism of an Adam Ant video.

It’s a metaphor for religion, gender and conventional morality, but an unfortunate one in a play full of stray threads.

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. When they were prosecuted for sodomy in 1721, Mülhahn claimed she’d been tricked by Linck and escaped with a three-year sentence.

But the whole thing is too gimmicky and too self-conscious in its juxtaposition of different eras to really work. The technical storage or access is strictly necessary for the legitimate purpose of enabling the use of a specific service explicitly requested by the subscriber or user, or for the sole purpose of carrying out the transmission of a communication over an electronic communications network.Still, there's something so lovable about this play and its quest to find a golden thread of joy in a dark, tattered old story.