Theatre
Natten är dagens mor
Not translated into English
Lars Norén · 1982
Synopsis
A small family hotel in Scania, from 9 to 10 May 1956. The storm does not break. Everything takes place in the kitchen: the father Martin, wine cellarman and owner, had gone a long time without drinking and starts again; the mother Elin drags around a cough that will not go away and keeps the house running; the two sons, Georg and David, are looking for their place. It is David's birthday, it is to be celebrated, the hotel is heading for bankruptcy and a payment is overdue. In one day and one night, each will have to say what he keeps silent.
Context
The play was premiered in 1982 at the Malmö municipal theatre, in a production by Göran Stangertz, and the evening became an event: it was taken up within the year on the major stages of Stockholm and Gothenburg. The actor playing the father, Kåre Sigurdson, received the following year the Thalia prize from an evening newspaper. It is partly autobiographical, and the younger son is the double of its author. The title is borrowed from the last line of a text by Erik Johan Stagnelius, which also supplied that of the second part. American jazz plays in the background from beginning to end.
Who it is for
A play set in one place and one day, in Swedish, with no established French edition. One must accept that nothing arrives from outside: everything comes from what four people say to each other in a kitchen.
Prizes and reception
Its author's breakthrough and one of the great plays of twentieth-century Swedish theatre, since staged in many foreign theatres.
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