One wins, everyone loses
Aylin, Anna Å and Christina Ottenäs, together in a chapel’s dressing room, are waiting to hear which of them will be crowned as this year’s Saint Lucia for the city of Trollhättan. Aylin would consider it a great honor. Anna Å thinks of the Lucia ritual as a fine tradition, filled with warmth, peace and love. Christina Ottenäs loves to sing, a central part of the ritual. And besides, her mother expects her to perform the role of Lucia, as she herself did, as did her mother, her grandmother, her great-grandmother, her great-great-grandmother and her great-great-great-grandmother before her.
The minister is old, Vaseline Man demands attention, young Staffan wants to break up, et cetera. (Et cetera, incidentally, doesn’t mean “the apple of your eye”, it means that you can’t think of anything else to say, as Staffan explains it to Aylin.)
Johanna Svalbacke’s The Lucia Candidates, with humor, darkness and a large dose of familiarity, tells the story of three young girls on the threshold of adulthood. Film and theatre director Marcus Carlsson has formerly directed, among other plays, Johanna Svalbacke's Shirin’s Wolves at the Gothenburg City Theatre. The Lucia Candidates is his first production at Backa Theatre. The play first opened in April 2021 and now will be performed for larger audiences at last.
