Melbourne Uni’s swish new, blue-hued Union Theatre seats 398 people. It’s a number made quietly devastating by Western Sydney playwright S Shakthidharan’s sprawling family epic Counting and Cracking.
Spanning almost 50 years, four generations and multiple countries – connecting Colombo, the capital city of Sri Lanka, to Sydney – much of what occurs is informed, one way or another, by the terrifying devastation of Sri Lanka’s Civil War. The fighting was ignited by the Black July riots of 1983, a pogrom that cruelly claimed countless souls. Bob Hawke’s Labor government offered 100 visas to the predominantly Tamil minority fleeing the country-wide wave of violence, or one for every fourth audience member. A pin-drop moment. But there’s much more on offer here than grasping despair.
It’s been five long years since Belvoir St Theatre first presented Counting and Cracking at the Sydney Town Hall during the 2019 Sydney Festival. Having travelled around the world since, snapping up a bunch of awards along the way, it’ll land in New York in September. But first, Melbourne audiences can see this glorious work of love and understanding as part of Rising.
Opening with a flourish of culture-clash comedy, an abundantly effervescent Shiv Palekar’s awkwardly topless Siddhartha is deeply uncomfortable about wading into the Georges River. He’s been ordered to do so by his overbearing yet bountifully loving mum Radha (a fabulously commanding Nadie Kammallaweera) to ceremonially scatter the ashes of his ammamma (grandmother). Radha’s fretting frustrations are priceless as she sharply backchats his ignorance of their family’s ways.
She carried Sid to Sydney in her belly and rarely speaks of her life in Sri Lanka. A distance between them that’s been amplified by him moving east, retreating from their shared home in Pendle Hill to Coogee while studying media studies (Radha playfully swipes at the ‘study’ repetition). He goes by the name Sid to his unseen uni mates, and the scant Tamil he knows is recalled by sound, rather than meaning, from the lullabies his ammamma once sang to him.
As directed by Eamon Flack – with he and Shakthidharan collaborating closely on this semi-autobiographical story – it plays out in a dusty courtyard with high stone walls punctuated by faded green gates. Sid’s doused by golden bowls bearing water, rather than the flow of the Georges River. It’s a gloriously theatrical touch in a show with grand scope, but one that’s simply and often funnily told. Simple props and actions transport us, collapsing space and time in the blink of an eye. Shakthidharan’s storytelling is so strong and clear that we hardly need the swinging street signs alerting us to where and when we are.
So, we’re whisked from the river to a meet-cute in an empty play park at 5am, care of a seesaw carried in by cast members. Here we meet Kalkadoon actor Abbie-lee Lewis as Lily, a Yolngu woman who helps Sid spy connections between the diaspora community he feels dislocated from and the First Nations, as written in the stars.
With a 19-strong ensemble leaping between 50-plus characters and speaking five languages translated in real-time, there’s a constellation swirling to make this show happen. They include Rodney Afif as the irrepressibly optimistic Turkish man hired to install Radha’s new air conditioner, who has high hopes of winning her hand if only he can navigate past her exasperated responses to her door buzzer.
We’ll meet younger Radhas – including Radhika Mudaliyar as her 21-year-old self – her amma (mother) and Sukania Venugopal as her ammamma. Multi-hyphenate film and theatre-maker Prakash Belawad depicts her politician grandfather (tatta) with great gravitas. Through intricately laced snippets, we begin to piece together the rich tapestry of her personal history, including a choice between two young men: Sukhbir Singh Walia’s journalist and Kaivalya Suvarna’s son of a fruit seller.
As a fictionalised reflection of aspects of her true story, Shakthidharan’s mother, Anandavalli, also plays a key role in bringing this majestic show to life. A dance teacher who founded her own academy, her choreography skills corral Counting and Cracking’s magnificent dance sequences. She aided Dale Ferguson’s costume designs and oversaw all cultural details. Carnatic music played on stage by a three-piece band brings us in closer still to the unravelling narrative.
Decentering whiteness at every step, the play features a fleeting mention of former Prime Minister John Howard and his notorious slight against Sri Lankan cricketing hero Murali, eliciting cheeky guffaws, and tut-tuts at a drunk British person at a wedding, but that’s about it. Instead, Shakthidharan guides us, through Sid and Radha’s stories, to witness both the fractious sweep of recent Sri Lankan history and a more inclusive view of Australian identity.
Counting and Cracking contains multitudes, with the actors spilling out over the stage’s boundary and in via various auditorium doors to either break the fourth wall or hold us rapt in a moment, like a tense series of phone calls when it all goes to the wall in ’83. Capturing so much in a three-and-a-half-hour run that never wears its weight heavily, the play’s a marvel. Overall, it’s a contemporary classic that is well worth Melbourne’s wait.
Counting and Cracking is playing at the University of Melbourne's Union Theatre until June 23 and tickets are available here.