Counting and Cracking review — epic family drama plays out against Sri Lankan political strife

A transporting fug of incense fills the auditorium during S Shakthidharan’s epic play Counting and Cracking, which draws on the stories of his own family in both Sri Lanka and Australia. Hailing from Sydney’s Belvoir St Theatre and now playing at the Lyceum as part of the Edinburgh International Festival, this is rich, heady, memorable stuff, made taut by political struggle and the unignorable tug of family ties.

In Sydney in 2004, 21-year-old authorial stand-in Siddhartha (Shiv Palekar) is scattering his grandmother’s ashes in the river, guided through this Sri Lankan ritual by his frustrated mother, Radha (Nadie Kammallaweera). She’s bewildered by this thoroughly Australian child she’s raised and by his media studies degree: “What does that mean, studying studies?” she asks. But Siddhartha’s attention is monopolised by Lily (Abbie Lee Lewis), an Indigenous Australian Yolngu law student he woos by starlight, as they swap stories of their family traditions. In her own modest way, Radha is also embracing Sydney life, cautiously flirting with the Turkish engineer who is fitting her air conditioning unit. Then a phone call comes that drags Radha and Siddhartha back to the past, to the Sri Lanka they thought they’d left behind.

A pacy succession of scenes set between the 1950s and 1980s sketches the origins of Sri Lanka’s civil war, seen through the story of Radha’s family. The grandfather she knows as Apah (Prakash Belawadi) is a leading Tamil politician in a nation where the balance of power is rapidly shifting towards the Sinhalese majority. He rails against the rise of nationalist sentiment on both sides, becoming a political island as the Tamil Tigers marshal their forces against an authoritarian government.

The contours of this story are complex but its emotional appeal is simple. In one memorable scene, the young Radha (an impassioned Vaishnavi Suryaprakash) interrupts her family’s complex political debates by handcuffing herself to her grandfather’s chair, refusing to abandon her protest until he allows her to marry for love, not political alliance. As violence surges, Radha is left with a painful choice. Should she stay, cowering among the wreckage of her dreams of a harmonious, multicultural Sri Lanka? Or should she go, leaving everything she knows behind?

Director Eamon Flack’s multilingual (English, Tamil and Sinhalese) production uses a mixture of splendour and wit to keep its audience’s attention as the characters and complications multiply. Sri Lankan musicians play at the side of the stage, soundtracking the action in rich, juddering waves of sound, occasionally using a delicate traditional flute to mimic Skype’s familiar ringtone. Siddhartha and Lily escape their struggles to hurl themselves joyfully across the stage on a giant foamy slip-and-slide.

As both Australia and the UK become ever more unwelcoming to refugees, Counting and Cracking offers a gentle but insistent plea for humanity. It’s impossible not to listen, rapt.

★★★★☆

To August 14, eif.co.uk, then September 19-27, Birmingham Rep, birmingham-rep.co.uk