Fellow audience members are just as interesting to watch as the Pulitzer Prize-winning play itself. Sanaz Toossi’s English, now in the middle of its extended run at London’s Kiln Theatre after a stint at the Royal Shakespeare Company in Stratford-upon-Avon, follows a group of adults in Iran preparing for their Test of English as a Foreign Language (or TOEFL). It generates a lot of laughter from fellow patrons for the first half of the 90-minute play, I’d say, though there’s something incredibly unpleasant about a Western audience laughing at a bunch of Iranians for struggling to get to grips with a language as incredibly complex as English.
What’s fascinating is seeing this initial humour from fellow patrons shift to a more pensive, considered response to the script by the show’s conclusion. I’m not a betting man, but I’d argue it exposes the number of people in the crowd who don’t know a second language, as that initial enthusiasm for learning which is so often ridiculed by others (indeed, it’s mocked by characters in the show) is all too familiar a feeling for those of us who have embarked on the journey of language acquisition, and isn’t something at which we should be laughing.
I think Diyan Zora’s direction does encourage laughter at this sentiment (what with the students adopting a bouncy, almost sing-song voice when speaking English), but it’s justified in more ways than one. It disarms the audience; it endears us to the characters; and it’s necessary for the impactful and subversive scenes that follow, not least the play’s conclusion.
The most beautiful and striking point within this play is the sense of cultural compromise that comes with learning another language – especially when it comes to people in the Middle East trying to pick up and adopt a Western language and its accompanying culture (there is comedy around this particular notion, namely when Sara Hazemi’s Goli plays Shakira’s “Wherever, Whenever”). How much should we sacrifice of our native tongue and culture to bridge the communication gap?
The answer is investigated in many marvellous forms. Elham (Serena Manteghi) has insecurities over her accent and has the audience rooting for her as she struggles to find the right vocabulary for her address to the class; Roya (Lanna Joffrey) highlights the varying weight and fluidity we can attach to our words based on the language in which it is delivered, and is damning in the West’s need to have names Anglicised for ease (such amusing defiance forms part of a tally system penalising the use of Farsi in class); and teacher Marjan (Nadia Albina) seems to have not struck a balance at all, shunning Farsi completely.
There’s some finer subtleties too, such as English spoken at a faster pace – as opposed to a more staccato, word-by-word delivery – to denote Farsi (something I should have clocked much sooner), and Anisha Fields’ classroom set design, where a Perspex screen at the back of the room not only works well in presenting a warped view of the Western media Marjan and remarkably skilled student Omid (Nojan Khazai) watch together on a retro TV in the corner, but also literally blurs the boundary between the contained environment of the classroom and the outside world.
So many binaries, which I feel speaks to the production as a whole. We are encouraged to meet the characters halfway in their pursuit of grasping English, and while I believe that process and concept is more easily understood by those who know a second language, I really hope – in line with Toossi’s ambition for audiences to come away wanting to learn another language – that English prompts patrons to consider parity within the transactional experience of communication.
★★★★★
English is now playing at the Kiln Theatre until 6 July.
Audio described and British Sign Language (BSL) integrated performances are scheduled for 27 June and 4 July respectively.
Production Images: Richard Davenport (c) RSC.
Liam O'Dell 