A story about maternal love against the backdrop of Soviet and post-Soviet history. The author depicts the panorama of the lives of a community from a small town in Donbas in eastern Ukraine, where the author comes from. They picture the period from the decline of the Soviet Union, through Euromaidan, the war in Donbas in 2014 right until the Russian aggression against Ukraine in 2022. Mother by Gorky is the second part of the trilogy from the life of the small town.
"Lena Lagushonkova, a young Ukrainian playwright from Luhansk – now living in Kyiv – writes in her plays about the life of a young woman against the backdrop of revolution and war. The short dialogues and monologues in her plays are imbued with spare, direct language and sharp-witted humour. Her trilogy consists of the plays Gorky's Mother, PGT and My banner was pissed on by a cat. The latter is about her efforts to lose her virginity during the Euromaidan Uprising in Ukraine. She recounts historical events in Ukraine and her life in the occupied territory of Luhansk. The narrative – based on fragments of everyday life – develops into an epic drama: war, poverty, devastation and the agonising recognition of people and their actions. It is at once comedy and tragedy." - Marius Ivaškevičius, Lithuanian playwright.