English (Roundabout Theatre Company)

By Harry Forbes

I didn’t catch Sanaz Toossi’s 2022 play about four students taking an English proficiency course in Iran when it played the Atlantic (in a co-production with Roundabout). But now, here it is on Broadway under the auspices of Roundabout, after winning the Pulitzer Prize for drama in 2023. And a very worthy play it is.

It took several minutes to engage me, as I feared the humor of the piece would have rather too much to do with the stumbling malaprops of the native Farsi speaking students. But as “English” progresses, Toossi’s themes of language and how it impacts one’s sense of national identify and native culture becomes clear and profound. 

Right from the start, you tune into Toossi’s clever device of having the cast speak in unaccented English when they are, in fact, speaking Farsi. But when they attempt their often fractured English, they speak with an accent. We get a sense of their "real" selves through the former.

The time is 2008, and their instructor is Marjan (Marjan Neshat) who has lived in Manchester, England for nine years, before returning to her native Karaj. She insists that only English be spoken in the classroom, but the role is frequently broken by her frustrated pupils.

The students, ostensibly there to prepare for the Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL) exam, include Elham (Tala Ashe) who, as we soon learn, has already failed that test several times. She resents having to learn English but is determined to work in Australia in the field of gastroenterology. Roya (Pooya Mohseni), older than the others, needs to learn English so she can join her son and grandchild in Canada, and not embarrass her son who, it seems, disdains his Iranian heritage. And Goli (Ava Lalezarzadeh), a cheerful 18 year old who simply believes English will be a useful tool in the future. Her elucidation of Ricky Martin’s “She Bangs” song, her contribution to a “show and tell” exercise, is the play’s comic highpoint. 

Quite different than the rest is the one male student Omid (Hadi Tabbal), whose English is far better than all the others but says he recognizes his shortcomings in the language. He and Marjan bond over their mutual enjoyment of Western rom-coms like “Notting Hill” and “Moonstruck,”  which Marjan screens in her office to learn greater proficiency. Along the way, an unstated affection grows between them. 

In the classroom, tensions build as the female students wonder whether the struggle to learn English is worth it, at the same time they ponder whether they stand to lose more than they gain from immersing themselves in a language so removed from their own. Tellingly, though, Marjan reveals at one point that she likes herself better in English.

All of this is absorbing and thought provoking and Knud Adams directs with great sensitivity. The cast is uniformly excellent.

The action plays out on Marsha Ginsberg’s revolving box set which allows us to see everything from different angles though occasionally the vertical beams that limn the classroom, block our view of the action; ditto some of the furniture. Reza Behjat’s lighting subtly delineates the time of day. And there is a superbly effective use of music (mostly piano) to cover the scene changes which complement the emotional mood of the preceding scene, and balances the plainness of the classroom setting. . Likewise, a swelling symphonic interlude near the end makes the action before and after even more poignant. 

(Todd Haimes Theatre, 227 West 42nd Street; roundabouttheatre.org or 212-719-1300; thrugh March 2)

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