Theater: “Counting and Cracking” at NYU Skirball
Ethnic rivalries are the curse of civilization. They cause wars, lead to death and destruction, and break up friendships and families. When governments institutionalize such ethnic prejudice, a tense situation can escalate ever faster.
This is the subject matter of “Counting and Cracking,” S. Shaktidharan’s epic play that kicked off the Public Theatre’s 2024-25 season Friday night.
The play opens in Sydney, Australia circa 2004. We are introduced to Sid, short for Siddhartha (Shiv Palekar), a handsome university student who lives near the beach and majors in media studies. Across town resides his no-nonsense immigrant mother Radha (Nadie Kammallweera), a mathematician. “I don’t understand how you can study ‘media studies’,” she says.
Sid, born in Australia shortly after his mother’s arrival, knows nothing about the circumstances under which she fled
Sri Lanka or the fate of his father Thirru (Antonythasan Jesusthasan). Radha clearly does not want to talk about it.
The play then flashes back to Sri Lanka in the late 1970s to explain not only how young Radha and Thirru met but how the relationship between the Tamils and the Sinhalese, two rival ethnic groups in the country, quickly deteriorated. Radha’s grandfather Apah (Prakash Chandrani) had been a minister in a centrist government that believed in unifying disparate factions. But Sinhalese mobs favored an ethnic-based political party and began stirring up trouble against the Tamils, who were long resented both as immigrants from India and for their fluency in English.
Radha’s elite family, who are Tamils, want no part of this us-versus-them violence. But circumstances soon dictate otherwise. As the government-sanctioned hunt for Tamils begins, Radha is afforded a last-minute opportunity to emigrate to Australia and she takes it. Unfortunately, she is separated from her husband, young Thirru (Kalvalya Suvarna) in the process. His fate is revealed as the play unfolds.
“Counting and Cracking,” which had its American premiere Friday night at NYU’s Skirball Theater, is perhaps the first-ever look at the Tamil-Sinhalese civil war, which lasted 25 years and led to 160,000 deaths and 800,000 displaced persons.
While the subject matter is deadly, the production is anything but. The quick scene changes between Radha’s childhood and her coming of age in Sri Lanka and her adulthood in Sydney keep the action moving. Additionally, the warm, witty interactions of the extended family eill charm and seem familiar to those of us who grew up in first- and second-generation American families.
The entire Sri Lankan-Australian cast, direct from Sydney’s Belvour St Theater, is marvelous, and as the playwright explains in a brief statement before the play, the actors are fluent in the play’s multiple languages (with on-stage translation in English provided in real time.) It’s a fascinating look at the kind of conflict that may seem thousands of miles away but is not as distant nor unfamiliar as we think.
Note: “Counting and Cracking,” performed at NYU Skirball in partnership with the Public Theater, is only here until September 22. So I strongly suggest you get cracking and book a ticket, mate.
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