Linck and Mülhahn review — love, trans rights and punk in 18th-century Saxony

★★☆☆☆
We’re passing through a phase where dramatists addressing the question of gender identity seem to place uplift above all else. This is not a healthy trend. Fist-clenching activists may be happy enough; the rest of us are left starved of subtlety and insight.

The last time the young writer and actress Ruby Thomas had a play staged at Hampstead, in the downstairs studio space, she gave us The Animal Kingdom, a thoughtful and beautifully acted sequence of family therapy sessions. For her latest offering, she has been promoted to the main stage. Sadly, it turns out to be the latest in a worrying run of substandard pieces unveiled there.

Thomas has found inspiration in the obscure 18th-century trial in Saxony of Anastasius Linck