Today on Mother’s Day, Laurie Metcalf as Linda Loman is telling off her children that attention must be paid; she means to her husband, not herself. Shoshana Bean as Lucy Emerson discovers what no mother wants to hear – that her eldest son is a half-vampire. Maya Rudolph as Mary Todd Lincoln ignores her sons, while Rosie Benton as Virginia Creel tries to have hers locked up before he kills again. They are the mothers on Broadway – in productions of “The Lost Boys” and “Death of A Salesman,” which both opened in the season just ended, and the longer-running “Oh, Mary“ and “Stranger Things: The First Shadow,”

More vivid still are the mothers who have already finished their runs this season: Kristin Chenoweth as “Queen of Versailles”’ Jackie Siegel, mother of eight children, although we only saw two of them; Susannah Flood as both Lizzie and her mother Lizzie before she was a mother, leading a group of feminists in 1970 meeting weekly in “Liberation.” Lesley Manville as Jocasta in “Oedipus,” the most problematic of mothers.

Every season seems to offer supportive mothers and complicated ones. Below are ten videos by or about mothers in seasons past.