Counting and Cracking
Carriageworks
June 29
Until July 21
★★★★½
Longevity is rare for any Australian production, let alone one with a cast of 19 non-Anglo performers dealing with events in a country far away and performed in several languages.
But this play’s continued success – as with Shankari Chandran’s 2022 novel Chai Time at Cinnamon Gardens, which traverses similar terrain – demonstrates that a bold, cross-cultural tale can speak to a mainstream audience.
This is a welcome return of the Australian-Sri Lankan family epic, which premiered at the 2019 Sydney Festival.
Sukania Venugopal & Nipuni Sharada help unravel mysteries in Counting and Cracking. Credit: Pia Johnson
Since then, the production has toured to Adelaide, Melbourne and the UK, been showered with awards and will move to New York in September.
At the centre of S Shakthidharan’s play is the formidable Radha, who fled Sri Lanka alone and pregnant with her son in 1983. The Tamil woman doesn’t speak of the past. She’s too busy dealing with an air-conditioning man at her Pendle Hill flat. Meanwhile, her son, Siddhartha, revels in Coogee’s salty air and his budding romance with Lily, a Yolngu woman. But the past is about to come calling.
The play shifts nimbly between Sydney and Sri Lanka, unfolding over 50 years. The saga rewinds to events that triggered a civil war lasting 26 years and the arrival in Australia of fleeing Tamil refugees.
The play is tighter and more focused than five years ago, particularly the sense of rising panic conveyed in a series of telephone calls in the third act.
With seats configured around a catwalk stage, the audience sits close to the action. Dale Ferguson’s set has an appropriately make-shift feel, with few props beyond a chair and telephone. Performers at the edge of the stage simultaneously translate non-English dialogue.
