English review – funny and moving Pulitzer prize winner makes Broadway leap
Immigrants moving to the west are forced to shed a layer of themselves for the sake of belonging. Traditional names are reconstructed and collapsed into digestible English versions. Accents from faraway countries are either buried for protection or wither away over time. English, as a language, becomes a mandatory mother tongue.
English, Sanaz Toossi’s stunning Broadway debut, is a precise study of language’s significance. The 2023 Pulitzer prize winner slyly presents as a comedy about studying a foreign language, but eventually blooms into an evocation of grief and assimilation.
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Four Iranian students are studying for the TOEFL exam, a standardized test to measure English proficiency, under instructor Marjan (Marjan Neshat), who previous resided in England but has since returned to Iran.
The stakes of English are clear as passing the TOEFL is a dire must for all students. A failed exam could be the final obstacle between a green card or a university admission. But despite being set in a foreign class, the play is almost spoken entirely in English, with actors only signifying the switch to Farsi based on their accent (English is spoken in starts and sputters).
The technique is one of Toossi’s many triumphs in craft, alongside sublime direction from Knud Adams. The TOEFL class – simply a row of desks, a white board, and a projector – is set inside a box that rotates slowly, offering glimpses of various pupils set against Reza Behjat’s delicate lighting. Scene transitions are set to dolce piano music (sound design by Sinan Refik Zafar).
Script wise, Toossi embraces the hijinks of a foreign language classroom: awkward oral exercises, all-too-proper English audio tapes, games to reinforce English vocabulary words. Goli (charmingly played by Ava Lalezarzadeh), the youngest, gives a presentation on the lyrics of Ricky Martin’s She Bangs, a hilarious scene buoyed by Lalezarzadeh’s comedic timing.
But Toossi captures much more elusive hopes and fears of what conquering English means to each student. The English language is a pathway to promise, says Marijan. Speaking English, she says, “is one of the greatest things two people can do together”. Not everyone agrees. While competitive pupil Elham (Tala Ashe) wants to master English to be accepted into an Australian medical school, she openly despises the clunky language and her forced divorce from Farsi; she calls her English accent a “war crime”, warning Goli and others that native English speakers will find them stupid. Roya (Pooya Mohseni), the oldest TOEFL student, also de-boards the English express after initially wanting to connect with her expat son and grandchild.
Even for Omid (Hadi Tabbal), having advanced English language skills doesn’t quite secure his feelings of belonging. “The only place I speak perfect English is here,” he tells his classmates. “You can hear the gap between not from here, not from there.”
The play remains airy and expressive, even amid the beginning’s slow build, thanks to English’s all-around, exemplary cast. Ashe and Neshat, as individuals and in their joint scenes, deliver especially stirring performances in their often-opposing treatments of the English language.
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Neshat plays Marjan with a tenderness that reaffirms her legitimate desire to help her students succeed, even if it manifests as petty behavior. Meanwhile, Ashe’s Elham is fiery, determined and blunt, often to the irritation of her classmates. But, like Neshat’s Marjan, Ashe never makes Elham the villain, resisting the urge to pigeonhole her as a complete frustration. Instead, it is so evident that both women are stuck in “the gap”, as Omid describes, incapable of completely locating themselves given English’s demands to fit.
That’s where the devastation lies. Why the laughter from the audience (in response to the ‘broken’ English) eventually peters out. The complicated grief of owning English means losing something: leaving behind beloved Iran, having less and less chances to speak with someone who completely, wholly, understands you.
At the play’s end, a short scene spoken in Farsi between the two feels equal parts satisfying, sad, and cathartic. Farsi, with its “poetry” (as Goli calls it) is in full display, but something about the conversation feels increasingly rare. The woman will not always have chances to talk like this. New English words have been gained, but something is given too.
