At last, Melbourne has the chance to experience this brilliant, epic play that humanises Sri Lanka’s troubled past and those who fled to Australia.

After critically acclaimed, sold-out seasons at the 2019 Sydney and Adelaide festivals and a 2022 UK tour, Counting and Cracking is here as part of the RISING festival. High time given its numerous awards include the prestigious Victorian Prize for Literature in 2020, and Melbourne’s Sri Lankan community is apparently Australia’s largest.

Counting and Cracking. Photo Pia Johnson

Partly inspired by his own family’s story, Sri Lankan-Australian S. Shakthidharan wrote Counting and Cracking in collaboration with the Artistic Director of Sydney’s Belvoir St Theatre, Eamon Flack, who also deftly directs.

We meet four generations of richly drawn characters in this play, which opens in Sydney in 2004. Sri Lankan-Australian Radha, her son Siddhartha and his Yolngu girlfriend Lily are getting on with life. Radha, widowed before Siddhartha was born in Australia 21 years ago, is even considering a date with a Turkish-Australian. Everything changes when a man just released from prison in Colombo, Sri Lanka phones.

We then go back and progressively forward to key points in time...