Posts Tagged Swedish history

Solo Show Illuminates the Defiant Life of Princess Cecilia Vasa

August 17, 2026 at 5:53 pm · Filed under Biographical, Edinburgh Fringe 2026, Edinburgh Fringe Festival, Edinburgh Fringe Festival 2026, History, Solo, Theatre ·Tagged , , , , , , ,

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⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Daughter of Sweden is a confident, well‑researched and quietly powerful one‑woman show, carried by Cecilia Säverman’s command of the stage and a script that brings Princess Cecilia Vasa’s turbulent life into sharp, human focus.

Säverman handles the inherent exposure of a solo show with real assurance. A one‑person piece leaves nowhere to hide: pacing, tone, audience connection, emotional shifts — all of it rests on a single performer. She keeps the room engaged throughout, maintaining momentum without rushing, and giving the historical material space to hit home. Her delivery has clarity and warmth, and she knows exactly when to lean into humour, indignation or quiet sadness.
The script does an excellent job of making Princess Cecilia Vasa accessible to a modern audience. Born in 1540 and living until 1627, Cecilia’s life is unusually long for her era — and unusually dramatic. The show foregrounds the moment that defined her public reputation: in 1559, at just nineteen, she was discovered with a lover, triggering a scandal that followed her for decades. Säverman presents this not as a footnote but as the hinge on which Cecilia’s life turned — a moment where personal desire collided with dynastic expectation.
The production also touches on Cecilia’s later reputation for dabbling in privateering. A privateer was essentially a state‑licensed pirate: someone authorised by a crown to raid enemy ships. The show uses this to underline Cecilia’s refusal to fit the mould of a compliant royal woman. She was not content to sit quietly in the background; she wanted agency, leverage, and independence — even if it meant stepping into morally grey waters.
The strongest thread running through the piece is the tension between what society demanded of women and what Cecilia actually was. Säverman plays her as capable, intelligent, stubborn and unwilling to be shaped into something smaller. The show doesn’t shy away from the sadness in her story either:
• Most of her children died before she did.
• One survived her only by a few months.
• Others were taken from her by in‑laws, including a daughter she was prevented from seeing for years.
These details give the piece emotional depth. Cecilia’s resilience becomes more than a historical footnote — it becomes the emotional spine of the show.
The writing is informative without ever feeling like a lecture. It’s educational in the best Fringe sense: you leave knowing more than you arrived with, but you never feel you’ve been talked at. The blend of biography, political context, and personal tragedy is well judged.
Daughter of Sweden is a thoughtful, engaging and well‑performed historical monologue. Säverman carries the responsibility of a solo show with confidence, and the script offers a compelling portrait of a woman who refused to be defined by scandal or by the narrow expectations of her time. It’s a rewarding hour — both enlightening and quietly moving.
Reviewed by Pat Harrington
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Daughter of Sweden: Cecilia Saverman on Reviving a Princess History Tried to Erase

July 12, 2026 at 7:21 am · Filed under Biographical, Drama, Edinburgh Fringe Festival, Edinburgh Fringe Festival 2026, History, Interviews ·Tagged , , , , , , , ,

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Cecilia Saverman doesn’t ease you into Cecilia Vasa’s world — she drops you straight into the madness. Five years of research left her with a life so outrageous it barely feels real: piracy confrontations that make you laugh and wince in the same breath, scandals that rattled royal courts across an entire continent, and family letters so chaotic they read like a soap opera you shouldn’t enjoy but absolutely do.

What Saverman captures is the full, contradictory force of Cecilia Vasa herself — heroine, caring mother, sharp diplomat, messy party princess, egocentric daredevil, unstoppable climber of mountains and faller into pits who always gets back up. Cecilia Vasa lived in  the 16th century (born 1540). With director Judith Hollander, she throws the audience between comedy and tragedy, intimacy and grandness, hope and surrender, never letting the story settle into one tone for long.

And beneath all the spectacle sits something fiercer: a history that was actively deleted, now brought forward almost as an act of defiance. Saverman isn’t preaching. She’s reclaiming. She wants audiences to feel closer to their own past, to recognise how stories about women become political whether anyone intends them to or not.

This is Cecilia Vasa returned to the stage — vivid, volatile, and impossible to ignore.

1. What’s the single most shocking thing about Cecilia Vasa’s life that will make people gasp? – The fact that it’s actually happened and that we’ve not heard about her. An actual princess who became a pirate, exile, diplomat, and so on! Apart from that, her life just keeps getting crazier and more unfathomable for every step along the way, it’s hard to pick just one thing. The five year research was a never-ending rollercoaster. Maybe a certain window-climbing episode.

2. Which moment in the show makes you laugh and wince at the same time? – There is an episode where her brother confronts her about her piracy, and she has to admit to a lot of what she’s done, and it’s just crazy that it’s actually true. And when one of her lovers is locked up in a castle, and she’s barred from the city to keep her away from him, but she just sneaks into a boat and rows to him, in the middle of the night.

3. How far did you push the sex and scandal on stage, and why that exact level of explicitness? – The sex aspect is suggestive, but not explicit. The scandal, however, shook the entire continent – if the royal courts are to be trusted about these matters, that is. While the acts in and of themselves plants the seed for her struggle for freedom and sets her off on her path in life, I’m more interested in the consequence of the acts, rather than the acts themselves.

4. Did you ever fear the play would be banned or spark a diplomatic row? – Last time Cecilia Vasa was in the UK she was thrown out, so lets hope I have better luck with the Swedish-UK relations.

5. Is Cecilia a heroine, a mess, or gloriously both — and why should we care? – Yes, yes, and yes. On top of that – she is apparently also related to Boris Johnson. She is a heroine, a caring mother, a smart diplomat, a messy party princess, an egocentric daredevil, an unstoppable force who will climb any mountain, fall into every pit and always get up.

6. Are there scenes that touch on coercion or questionable consent and how do you approach that? – No. Or, it depends in what sense. Most of the things she does is very questionable, and I guess the definition of piracy is that it’s non-consensual, and her whole life is a struggle to be able to control her own narrative, and there are rumours about her having a brothel, and there’s stealing and bad decisions going on, and forceful removal from several places, but nothing in the play that touch on coercion of a sexual nature. It’s been important to approach it in a mixture of drama and comedy. It can be extremely funny with someone trying to lure themself to advantages, but also very tragic.

7. Is there a line in the script which makes you blush when you say it out loud? – Not while playing…

8. How do you want audiences to feel about monarchy and power when they leave the theatre? – Difficult question. I want them to want to know more, because it’s our history, I guess. I want them to feel close to our common history. Cecilia Vasa is a princess, a pirate, a mother of seven – and also just a human being. I want them to be able to laugh about the messiness, but I also want them to feel outraged about how it’s been, and maybe see parallels to today. Why haven’t we gotten further? How can this still be going on? I’ve received several emails from people in the audience saying that they saw themselves and their family in this play, and that it both opened and healed wounds in them about power and dynamics.

9. Do you think that there is a feminist message here or about women’s ‘role’ in society then and now? – Yes. I think it’s impossible to tell a story about women today without it becoming political – in the same way I think that stories about lgbtq+ or about non-white people or about people whose bodies are outside the norm automatically becomes political – whether it’s the intention or not. I wrote this story because Cecilia Vasa fascinated me to my core, and I saw so much of my surroundings, including myself and my mother, and society in her. It has never been about sending a message, but it becomes a message because it is a story that has never been told. It’s been actively deleted – which is of course very political – so bringing it forward might in a sense be an act of defiance.

10. What’s the one historical fact you refused to change, no matter how tempting the drama? – Everything. It’s my interpretation of her life, but every fact is true. That’s the insane part.

11. How bawdy do the party scenes get, and how do you balance that with the darker fallout? – I love tossing myself and the audience between highs and lows. My brilliant director Judith Hollander has created an intense balance between comedy and tragedy, intimacy and grandness, hope and surrender. She has so much to fight for, and sometimes she’s just hilarious. During my research I read many letters between her and her siblings, and it was like a soap opera. I would laugh out loud, between the horrors that they put themselves and each others through.

12. Have you ever had hecklers or walkouts, and what did you do when it happened? – Not that I recall, but I’ve received angry emails from older men saying that they don’t believe this or that to be true, and also “that piece of prop is ugly”. Very sweet of them to take their time to let me know.

13. Would you ever stage a strictly adults‑only version — and what would you change? – Maybe adding some more in the Elizabeth-scene, haha! And the first scandal scene. And her encounter with the Spanish envoy Eraso, later on in her life. Very romantic, and got her thrown out of Sweden. But the show is only 60 min now, so not everything can be in it…

14. What single image from the production do you want to haunt people for days, and why that image? – You’ll have to come see the show! You’re in for a haunting treat!

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