Sydney play Counting and Cracking wins praise at Edinburgh festival

A family saga by Sydney playwright S. Shakthidharan is making an impression as Australian artists descend on the Edinburgh International Festival.

The Australian play Counting and Cracking has received rave reviews during its run at the Edinburgh International Festival. Picture: AFP

Sydney play Counting and Cracking has opened to a five-star review and critical acclaim at the Edinburgh International Festival, where it is part of the largest contingent of Australian performing arts in the prestigious Scottish ­festival.

The multi-awarded play by S. Shakthidharan earned five stars in The Times, whose critic described the drama as gripping and novelistic in scope and ambition.

“Its 3½-hour running time goes by in a blink,” the review said.

Shakthidharan’s theatrical epic draws on his family’s experience of the civil war in Sri Lanka and emigration to Australia.

The drama has taken on renewed resonance given the recent political unrest in Sri Lanka.

Directed by Belvoir theatre company’s Eamon Flack, the multilingual play has 19 performers on stage from six different countries.

The Financial Times, giving four stars, said the play was “rich, heady, memorable stuff, made taut by political struggle and the unignorable tug of family ties”.

The Scotsman, giving four stars, noted that Australia was well known for family sagas on TV but with Counting and Cracking “there can rarely have been an Australian family story told with such purpose and passion”.

Australian artists are out in force at the Edinburgh festival, which started last Friday with an outdoor performance for more than 15,000 people at Murrayfield Stadium, led by Adelaide-based acrobatic group Gravity and Other Myths.

The festival will also see performances by the Australian World Orchestra, conducted by Zubin Mehta, and the play You Know We Belong Together from Perth’s Black Swan State Theatre Company.

Other Australians, including actor John Bell, musician Joseph Tawadros and contemporary circus Circa, are appearing in the House of Oz, a specially arranged showcase of artists.

The large Australian showing in Edinburgh, at one of the world’s most renowned arts events, is due to the UK/Australia Season, a cultural exchange backed by the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade and private donors.

This year is the 75th anniver­sary of the Edinburgh International Festival, and the final year for festival director Fergus Linehan, a former director of the Sydney Festival.

Counting and Cracking had its premiere at the 2019 Sydney Festival and went on to win seven Helpmann Awards and the Victorian Premier’s Literary Award. The play travels to the Birmingham 2022 Festival next week.