Jayantha Somasundaram in The Island 9 August 2024, …….. presenting a review COUNTING & CRACKING written for the stage by Sivanathan Shakthidharan and Directed by Eamon Flack …. and has this title “COUNTING & CRACKING: THE SUNTHARALINGAM SAGA”
Already staged in cities in the United Kingdom and Australia, Shakthidharan’s poignant drama directed by Eamon Flack, is a fictionalised version of a Sri Lanka family’s story; but not just any family. It is the Suntharalingam saga. It movingly recounts a biography that spans four generations; and in doing so it captures and critiques not just Sri Lanka’s social and cultural history, but its political tragedy as well.
Suntha in white national dress is on the extreme left front -next to Banda –in this picture of DS Senanayake’s first Cabinet
The wellspring of this tale is the playwright’s great grandfather Chellappah Suntharalingam who was born in the Jaffna Peninsula in the closing years of the nineteenth century. A civil servant, a mathematics professor and a barrister, he entered politics as a confidante of D. S. Senanayake. Following the 1936 State Council election, Suntharalingam ably assisted by his University College colleague, the mathematician F. H. V. Gulasekharam, worked out the permutations and combinations that ensured that all the chairpersons of the Executive Committees would be from the Sinhalese community. They would constitute what came to be called the pan-Sinhala Board of Ministers. D.S. Senanayake engineered this because he wanted to convince Ceylon’s British rulers that the Island’s minorities would be secure under Sinhala-majority rule, thereby strengthening the case for early independence.
Suntharalingam was elected to Parliament in 1947 becoming Minister of Trade and Commerce in the first Cabinet. But he broke with the Government the following year on the citizenship issue. Not only does the patriarch of the family appear in this play but its title is taken from what he said: “Democracy is the counting of heads within certain limits; and [the] cracking of heads beyond those limits.” And the political backdrop to this drama has its roots in his legacy.
The play is in four acts that weave together both the human and the political drama that unfolds. It begins in Colombo in 1957 when the author’s mother is born at the family home in Milagiriya Avenue, Bambalapitiya; named Shantham for its tranquillity and the presence of peace. Next to 1977 as the crisis gestates, to 1983 when it explodes, and finally to Sydney where in 2004 young Shakthidharan confronts the trauma of his personal, family and community’s heritage.
In many respects the production is ahead of its time. The stage is projected right into the well of the theatre. The characters speak in their original languages, be it English, Sinhalese or Tamil. And there are perfectly cued translations provided by supporting actors at the foot of the stage. There is evocative Carnatic music in the background. Unsurprisingly, in Australia the play won the Victorian Premier’s Prize for Literature and Helpmann Awards for Best Production and Best Direction.
The success in recreating not just events and characters but settings and symbols, is magical. The very ambience transports the audience to another place and another time. In the quest for authenticity the character playing the dramatist’s great grandmother is draped in a favourite saree of the matriarch herself!
The production is brilliant, spellbindingly so. The performance of the actors, their ability to personify and project the emotions and complexities of the roles they play; it is as though they are all on a mission to convey a difficult but crucial message – a task that seems to almost consume them.
When he embarked on this challenge, Shakthidharan saw Counting and Cracking as having two objectives. Firstly to “help people heal.” But also to bridge the generational gap between migrants settling in Australia and their Australia-raised children. Traumatised and confused parents from places like Sri Lanka often shrank from reliving their ordeal, or doubted that they can do justice to their own pain. Counting and Cracking is Shakthi’s endeavour to address “this silence that exists between first- and second-generation migrants … and that the wisdom of the incredible experiences they went through overseas can be passed on to future generations” (The Guardian Australia 17 January 2019).
Counting and Cracking will open next month at Jack H. Skirball Center for the Performing Arts in New York.
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ALSO NOTE
- https://thuppahis.com/2019/03/10/suntharalingam-saga-across-generations-captivates-adelaide/
- https://thuppahis.com/2019/01/17/cracking-impact-the-suntharalingam-sagas-theatrical-tour-de-force/
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C._Suntharalingam#Career
- https://thuppahis.com/2019/01/10/the-suntharalingam-familys-journey-sri-lanka-to-australia/
Sunderalingam had a son called Satyalingam who attended Royal College and was an excellent oriental musician. He managed/owned a coconut estate in Aturugiriya many decades ago. Any of his descendants among the living?