Three sons are forced to celebrate a furious mother on Mother's Day. They are forced into her room by their father. The mother screams that she doesn't want to, tells them to "go to hell" and throws books.
In his book “Forget Me,” Alex Schulman wrote autobiographically about his alcoholic mother who wanted to be left alone. He devoted no more than a page to the Mother's Day incident, but he felt he wanted to do more with it.
It has the elements that I like about stories; it's both very sad and tragic, but there's also a comedy to it.
Alex Schulman has used his own upbringing in his writing before. But he describes this play as fiction. He also does not want to say whether the reasons for his mother Saskia's deep sorrows are drawn from his family history.
- I don't want to go into what's what; I'd rather say that it is all fiction.
Hardly beautiful
In the first act, the three adult sons reluctantly make a cake together to celebrate their elderly mother who is waiting on the other side of the door. The conflict-filled cake baking brings back childhood memories, and the images of the mother and father are hardly flattering. After an intermission, the audience is instead invited into the mother Saskia's bedroom and hears her monologue.
"They might boo when the curtain rises for me," says Helena Bergström.
She sees the role as "a fantastic gift" and thinks that Alex Schulman "drilled his way into a woman's heart."
There is so much recognition in this. Even though you can't understand how she could behave like that toward a little boy, there are explanations.
"Reconciliation"
The play's Saskia is the first mother figure that Alex Schulman writes about in the first person. This time he feels he reaches deeper into the pain.
All these texts are attempts at reconciliation and forgiveness. Sometimes it's like I can't be a director - I get caught up in Helena's play, and then I actually have to say that I'm always afraid of her, on stage, that is, but there are also moments when I feel sorry for her.
He doesn't think his own story is interesting. Even though he writes to understand it, he wants to portray the universal.
I hope the big takeaway won't be "well, that's how Alex's mother was." The dream is that we start to look at this woman and that we slowly start to understand her.
Born: 1976
Lives: In Stockholm
He debuted in 2009 with "Hurry to Love" about his father. In 2011, the book "Being with Her Is Like Running up a Summer Meadow Without Getting Tired in the Slightest" was released, which revolves around his relationship with his wife Amanda. "Forget Me" from 2016 is about his mother and in 2018, "Burn All My Letters" was released about his grandparents' relationship. "The Survivors" (2020) and "Malma Station" (2022) were his first fictional novels.
He also runs the podcast "Alex & Sigges podcast", with his friend Sigge Eklund, with whom he has written several books.
Current with: Latest novel "June 17, 1986", nominated for the Swedish Radio Novel Prize, the film "Archipelago" which will premiere in the fall of 2026 and the play "Mother's Day" which will premiere on January 24 at the Dramaten.
