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'Counting and Cracking' review — a Sri Lankan Australian family epic

Read our review of Counting and Cracking off Broadway, a play by S. Shakthidharan presented by The Public Theater, Belvoir St Theatre, and Kurinji at NYU Skirball.

Caroline Cao
Caroline Cao

Why has Radha (a formidable Nadie Kammallaweera) kept her grandfather’s ashes under her bed for the past 21 years? She has difficulty connecting with her adult son, Siddhartha (Shiv Palekar, approaching him with self-aware, likable naivete), who has no intimate experience of his mother’s fraught history as a Tamil surviving the Sri Lanka Civil War. Inspired by his family history, playwright S. Shakthidharan’s Counting and Cracking unfolds this family pain in a Sri Lankan Australian family epic spanning about 50 years.

The play, presented by The Public Theater, bounces back and forth from Australia to Sri Lanka, from past to present. The buoyancy of Shakthidharan’s play finds its voice through the energetic direction of its associate writer, Eamon Flack. The first act toys with a lighthearted slice-of-life tone as a foil to the whirlwind second and third acts, which boil up in volcanic arguments between politicians and family members, putting on trial the notion that Sri Lankan politics can be simplified into a game of crickets.

Though Flack’s direction (speckled with Anandavalli’s choreography and costumes) felt cramped in NYU Skirball’s contained proscenium. Still, Flack manages to craft a thrilling pressure cooker of family drama. Proverbial dynamites are planted in a sequence blazing with testimonies of Tamil civilians against government brutality, grievances bouncing off corrupt cop’s deaf ears, a quarrel between granddaughter (younger Radha played by a fierce Radhika Mudaliyar) and grandfather (a fiery Prakash Belawadi).

By the play’s “to be continued” open-endedness of its final scene, I wondered if Shakthidharan intended to write a fourth act. I’ll be happy to watch it.

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Counting and Cracking summary

Inspired by the playwright’s family history, Counting and Cracking is a Belvoir St Theatre and Kurinji co-production that premiered in 2019 in Australia, where many Sri Lankans sought refugee status at the time.

Across its longform three acts, the family saga unravels in the English, Sinhala, Tamil, Turkish and Yolngu Matha languages, with the ensemble providing English translation. The play asks a common question in immigrant and refugee families: “How did we get to be here?”

Twenty-one-year-old Siddhartha and his single mother, Radha, live in Sydney, Australia. They are both making sense of the cultural chasm between them. Then one faithful phone call from a long-lost family member unleashes a flood of his mother’s history dating back to the 1950s, 1970s, and 1980s, unfolding the political turmoil that gripped her politician grandfather and displaced a then-pregnant Radha from Colombo, Sri Lanka.

The conflict concerns the Sri Lankan Civil War between the Sinhalese-dominated Sri Lankan government and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), which has a mortal cost on the marginalized Tamil community that Radha’s family is in.

What to expect at Counting and Cracking

Don’t sweat that Counting and Cracking is a 3-hour and 30-minute play with two intermissions. The family saga has a smooth flow and plenty of epic theatre techniques: The ensemble also operates as set dressing, sometimes holding up the appliances and other props in Act 1, finding comic notes.

The momentum of Counting and Cracking owes plenty to the three-person band (Kranthi Kiran Mudigonda, Janakan Suthanthiraraj, and Venkhatesh Sritharan) strumming their percussion instruments to bring Stefan Gregory’s sound design and music composition alive.

The program notes that the play contains direct quotes from real people, including Sri Lankan figures and a journalist.

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What audiences are saying about Counting and Cracking

As of publication, the audience review aggregator Show-Score has seven ratings that calculate into an audience approval score of 90%.

  • “Counting and Cracking is an epic Sri Lankan Australian play running at @nyuskirball It's fantastic and the best thing I've seen in a while. It's 3 hours+ long and I felt I could've kept watching it for at least 3 more” - X user @Bedatri
  • “It’s staggering that this is Shakthidharan’s debut play, because its narrative structure is tight and artful, its dialogue pitched almost entirely at the intersection between head and heart, and its story is epic in scale, but never sprawling. It blends time and place with feeling and clarity.” - Cassie Tongue’s 2019 Time Out review of the Sydney Festival production
  • “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.”- Alice Saville’s Financial Times review of the Edinburgh International Festival production
  • “As an Asian American, Counting and Cracking felt like a reflection about finding your way back home. The play was vibrant as it makes Sir Lankan culture come alive with the clothing to the dance to the language. Being entwined between two cultures and hidden secrets being uncovered brings the complexity of many immigrant families.” - My +1 at the show

Read more audience reviews of Counting and Cracking on Show-Score.

Who should see Counting and Cracking

  • Anyone interested in Counting and Cracking's conversation about Sri Lanka’s 26-year civil war and the ensuing displacement of Tamil citizens should see it.
  • Anyone up to experience a behemoth of 19 excellent ensemble performers, whose movements on stage exemplify the communal nature of storytelling.
  • At an aftershow talkback, the playwright spoke about how the play served as a dialogue and emotional release for those of the Sri Lankan diaspora, perhaps to even those with different experiences or opinions of the situation.

Learn more about Counting and Cracking off Broadway

Loaded with powerhouse performers, Counting and Cracking is a thriller of moving parts. Shakthidharan and Flack draw you into the perseverance and introspection of a fractured Sri Lankan Australian family. Before you know it, each act in Counting and Cracking sails by in the blink of an eye.

Learn more and get Counting and Cracking tickets on New York Theatre Guide. Counting and Cracking is at NYU Skirball through September 22.

Photo credit: Counting and Cracking off Broadway. (Photos by Pia Johnson)

Originally published on

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