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. Whether that's putting new work on stages across the world or supporting our outreach and learning programmes, every purchase you make really does make a difference. Though such ideas which appear compelling to Mülhahn feel light and unexplored as an audience member, even with all its impressive motifs. Ruby Thomas’ epic and playful love story, inspired by eighteenth-century court records and the extraordinary lives of a gender-pioneering couple, opened at Hampstead Theatre, London, in January 2023.

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. com shall not be deemed to endorse, recommend, approve and/or guarantee such events, or any facts, views, advice and/or information contained therein. We’re passing through a phase where dramatists addressing the question of gender identity seem to place uplift above all else.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. Like the principal characters, Thomas’s script eludes categorisation, weaving in Restoration comedy, Jane Austen and courtroom drama, as it depicts the unseemly scrabbles of the marriage market. 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. All well and good, but I wish Thomas and her director Owen Horsley had dug more deeper and faithfully into the story's period setting, and allowed us to care about both characters as messy, complicated products of their specific moment rather than as emblematic figures co-opted by history, even if the words non binary and trans are conspicuously not used.

Dashing soldier Anastasius Linck has no intention of falling in love, but a chance encounter with the rebellious Catharina Mülhahn changes everything.

An audio described performance will take place on 25 February, with a captioned showing on 28 February. They will be joined by Daniel Abbott, David Carr, Marty Cruickshank, Kammy Darweish, Qasim Mahmood, Leigh Quinn and Timothy Speyer. Anastasius Linck was assigned female gender at birth but became a soldier, a tradesman and husband to Catharina Mülhahn. The contemporary resonance is startling; by pointing this out in dogged, explicatory speeches, Thomas muffles the impact. Owen Horsley’s production locates it in a tender bath scene – perversely stuffed into an overhung corner of the set – where Maggie Bain’s charismatic Anastasius strips off for the first time, in the garret that has become the couple’s marital home, moments before the law comes banging at the door, bringing an abrupt swerve into courtroom drama.

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. Unlike Hampstead theatre, which, stripped of its grant last year, has just put on the most exhilarating play I’ve seen there for ages. 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.The most frustrating example of this is in its conclusion, where an intriguing commentary on truth is presented by the older Mülhahn, about something being made being “un-made”, and how the concept of truth has become subjective, ready to be reinterpreted by individuals as they see fit.