ajhlovestheatre

ENGLISH

by Sanaz Toossi

directed by Diyan Zora

Kiln Theatre, London – until 6 July 2024

https://kilntheatre.com/whats-on/english/

Since its off-Broadway premiere in 2022, Sanaz Toossi’s quietly brilliant ninety minute play has been seen in several major American cities and won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. Now English arrives in London, following a brief run in Stratford-upon-Avon, courtesy of the Royal Shakespeare Company in an understated but scintillating, and flawlessly acted, production by Diyan Zora. Watching it at the Kiln, it’s not hard to see what all the fuss is about.

It’s a fascinating piece, set in Karaj, Iran in the first decade of this century, depicting a quartet of adult students learning the English language under the tutelage of Marjan (Nadia Albina), returned from nine years in Manchester, who runs her classroom under the mantra “English Only”, which we see her writing on the whiteboard before even a word is spoken. Of course, her students, each of whom has their own very specific reasons for learning English, struggle with this rule and one of the conceits, not entirely original but dramatically pleasing, of the play is that when conversing in their native Farsi the characters adopt neutral, ostensibly British, accents but when speaking English their speech becomes broken, their accents strongly Iranian.

To people old enough to remember the distinctly un-PC British sitcom Mind Your Language, set in a language school and with enough yellow face and other racial tropes to give present day audiences the absolute ick, this premise might be a tad uncomfortable, were author Toossi not Iranian-American herself, and the depth, ambition and perception of her writing so clear and true. The final scene is played entirely in Farsi, and it’s sublimely moving.

Not all of the characters have been created with equal amounts of detail but the fine actors, under Zora’s restrained but perfectly pitched direction, bring them to vivid life. Roya (Lanna Joffrey, wonderful) wears the permanent expression of mixed-together panic, amazement and disdain so often adopted by older people well out of their comfort zone: she’s learning English so that she can move to Canada and communicate with her granddaughter, although it becomes clear that she and her expat son are tragically not on the same page.

The sole male in the group (Nojan Khazai’s blunt but likeable Omid) is ambitious (“I want to be like you. You could live anywhere. You could learn any language. You could do anything and you’re here” he says to Marjan at one point) but is concealing a surprising secret. Sara Hazemi’s enthusiastic, youthful Goli appears to be the most influenced by, and embracing of, foreign, specifically American, influences, while Serena Manteghi’s facetious, rule-bending Elham is in a race against time to get her English language qualification to go and train abroad, yet is probably the most fiercely nationalistic of the quartet.

Meanwhile, Marjan quietly yearns for England (“I always liked myself better in English”). Albina hauntingly suggests a gnawing loneliness and displacement underneath her usually peppy, occasionally infuriated exterior, and nails a beautiful speech near the end about how the foreigner abroad speaking that country’s native language is somehow always ‘othered’ and seldom fully able to express the full range of their humanity. If great drama encourages the viewer to genuinely open their minds and see things from another point of view then it’s during this illuminating section that English steps up a gear, and becomes something really distinguished. All of the acting is spot-on.

Toossi’s script never belabours the point that language can equally be a cage as much as a passport to freedom, preferring instead to skilfully and lovingly filter the information through her carefully drawn characters. There’s only one challenge to credibility, which is that the bolshiest, least receptive student suddenly passes her final test with flying colours but that, and an occasional tendency to go for the obvious laugh, are minor flaws in this exquisite, life-enhancing play.

Zora’s production has the exhilarating hallmarks of a project where everyone on the creative team is singing from the same hymn sheet, so to speak. Elliot Griggs’s lighting, bathing the unit set in colour to differentiate times of the day, Anisha Fields’s naturalistic, nicely specific costume and scenic designs, and the sound -unobtrusive but punchy when it needs to be- by George Dennis, are complementary and pretty much perfect.

English is a provocative modern classic and it’s hard to imagine a finer production of it. Very highly recommended.