ENGLISH
by Sanaz Toossi
Directed by Knud Adams
Atlantic Theatre
Reviewed by David Spencer
A sweet little ensemble play with flashes of profundity is English by Sanaz Toossi, currently at the Atlantic Theatre. Taking place in and immediately outside an Iranian classroom in the city of Karaj, it takes us through the term of a class dedicated to helping its students pass a TOEFL—Test of English as a Foreign Language—Exam; or cope with other challenges of learning the language. Its dedicated, compassionate teacher is Marjan (Marjan Neshat), 40-ish, having lived 12 years in America; Roya (Pooya Mosheni) a mother being pressured by her son in America to learn the language so she can be understood by her granddaughter; Goli (Ava Lalezarzadeh), on the brink of womanhood, who loves English; Elham (Tala Ashe), an aspiring medical aide in her late 20s who hates English…and Omid (Hadi Tabbal) a nice guy with what seems an unnatural gift for English.
Of course, it’s a play about identity from various angles: self-identity, national identity, and identity as perceived by the English speaking lands in which they need to navigate. It’s also a variation on what I call the “gathering” play, in which a cross-section of category-representative characters come together at a specific locale for a shared purpose, but each for their own reasons. It’s also an uncommon variation, in that it’s spaced out over the weeks of a semester, rather than concentrated on a single meeting…and that it doesn’t follow any of the familiar patterns, such as hidden truths emerging as the alcohol flows.
Hidden truths do emerge…but more naturally, in the normal course of people getting to know one another, and the environment coaxing them out of inevitable deductions, confessions and intimacies (platonic if not 100% non-romantic). There’s concomitantly an admirable shorthand in how all that unfolds; Ms Toosi packs a lot into her character arcs with a minimum of explanation. High context (as playwright Jeff Sweet has dubbed it) of setting, behavior and implication keep us in the audience as engaged in learning the characters as they are in learning a new language.
Add clean, sensitive direction by Knud Adams to the mix, and English is a class (act) worth attending.