Epic tale of destruction and family ties: Our latest show to take on the world
By Linda Morris
It’s an epic tale of political destruction and family ties. A runaway success in its Sydney season, its Melbourne run later this month has been long awaited. But the most exciting news for the Australian play Counting and Cracking is this: it’s heading to New York.
It will premiere with the same New York company that launched three of the world’s hit musicals, running for a three-week season in partnership with New York’s Public Theatre, incubator of some of Broadway’s biggest blockbusters including Hamilton, Cabaret and A Chorus Line.
New York here we come: Counting and Cracking director, Eamon Flack and writer S. Shakthidharan.Credit: Janie Barrett
It’s a coup for Belvoir Street Theatre, which last toured an Australian production in New York 10 years ago with the children’s production of Peter Pan.
Australian theatre is riding a wave of international success. Counting and Cracking’s move follows the critical success of Sydney Theatre Company’s West End production of The Picture of Dorian Gray, which won actor, Sarah Snook, and costumier, Marg Howell, Olivier awards each. Last year, playwright and former Sydney lawyer Suzie Miller won best new play at the Olivier awards, for Prima Facie. It also ran on Broadway.
Public Theatre’s artistic director Oskar Eustis said Counting and Cracking’s themes would have deep resonance for American audiences.
“Counting and Cracking tells the story of a multiethnic nation that is destroyed when cynical forces manipulate divisive identity politics, national and tribal, in pursuit of power,” Eustis said.
“Thirty years ago, these may have seemed distant themes to Americans: now, they are as immediate and searing as the wildfires consuming our forests.”
Counting and Cracking charts four generations of the one family starting in Sri Lanka’s capital Colombo through to exile in Sydney.
A breakaway success at the Sydney Festival in 2019, the show went on to win seven Helpmann awards. It is set to open the Rising Festival at the new Melbourne University Union Theatre, starring Victorian College of the Arts graduate Kaivu Suvarna before heading back to Sydney.
Dorian and Counting and Cracking are highly original productions and speak to the quality of Australian theatre.
The entire 19-member cast of Counting and Cracking will travel to New York for its September run.Credit: Brett Boardman
Eustis, one of America’s most admired theatre executives who helped launch Hamilton off-Broadway, praised Counting and Cracking as a “magnificent play and production”.
“Even more impressive for me was the story of how it was created,” he told this masthead. “Belvoir is one of those rare theatres that doesn’t just produce plays, they bring art into the world that wouldn’t exist without them. I’m honoured to be partnering with them.”
Theatre producer Michael Cassel played matchmaker, introducing Eustis on a visit to Sydney last year to Belvoir Street Theatre’s Eamon Flack, who asked Eustis to read the script.
“I’m not a very conniving person and Oskar is a bit of a hero of mine but I knew that if he just read it, I was pretty sure that he would like it,” Flack said.
The entire 19-member cast of Counting and Cracking will travel to New York for its September run.
“We haven’t been to New York for over a decade, and the last couple of times was under our own steam,” Flack said. “The Public rarely picks up a wholesale show from outside the United States, let alone from the southern hemisphere and Australia.”
“It seems ridiculous and crazy,” playwright and associate director Shakthi Shakthidharan said. “This is such a big show that’s coming out of Australia and we’ve never done anything like this before but there’s never been so much love for our show.
“It shows a community in all its glorious complexity. And, you know, it doesn’t sugar-coat or try and present us as model minorities. It just talks about who we really are.
“The story that happened in Sri Lanka is being played out all over the world. What the play explores is the politics of division and how that might be useful for politicians to win power. But it has disastrous consequences on public society that lasts for decades and can eventually lead to violence.”
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