Last Updated on June 9, 2024

Life in the classroom

English by Sanaz Toossi won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 2023 and recently made its UK debut at the Royal Shakespeare Company’s The Other Place Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon. Now there’s a chance to see this funny, thought-provoking production in London at Kilburn’s Kiln Theatre. Directed by Diyan Zora, the drama takes us into a classroom in Iran where four students are attempting to learn English and in some way to change their lives as a result. 

Elham (Serena Manteghi) is desperate to finally pass the exam that will allow her to further her medical career in Australia. Roya’s (Lanna Joffrey) son has emigrated to Canada and she longs to be able to communicate with her granddaughter. Omid (Nojan Khazai) is facing a Green Card interview for entry into the United States but already speaks suspiciously good English. Then there’s enthusiastic 18-year-old Goli (Sara Hazemi) who’s wanted to learn English since she was a small girl. Nadia Albina plays their relentlessly keen teacher Marjan who harks back to the nine years she spent in Manchester and whose whole identity seems wrapped up in the English language. 

The teacher walks into the empty classroom. It’s week one of a new class preparing students for the TOEFEL (Test of English as a Foreign Language) exam. Marjan approaches the board and writes English only in big capital letters and underlines the words three times. A lot of tension in this play derives from the students – with the mysterious exception of one – being unable to abide by this rule. By week three, Marjan tries to refocus the group and asks them to pretend they are not Iranian, indeed to let go of their “Iranian-ness”. “In this room, we are native speakers,” she says. “We think in English. We laugh in English. Our inhales, our exhales – we fill our lungs in English.” This is a challenge too far for one student. Soon there is a dropout, there are angry outbursts and great leaps forward.

The class moves – with comic effect – through many of the common techniques used in the teaching of teaching English as a foreign language from hot-potato word games to role-playing. Goli starts off with a show and tell. In halting English she demonstrates how to use an eyebrow pencil before lapsing into perfect English. It takes a couple of goes to pick up on the fact that complete fluency and accentless English means the characters are not speaking English at all but their own language Farsi. This clever device crops up throughout the play to good effect, revealing new facets to every character as they display their real selves. Roya, for example, is tongue-tied and baffled in English but articulate and opinionated in Farsi. Elham admits that she loses her mind when she speaks English. Her quick rudeness and outspokenness are softened and made more subtle somehow when she speaks Farsi.

This is a comedy with sad undercurrents that become ever more marked as the play unfolds. The cast of five is all convincing especially as they switch between their “English” personas and their Farsi-speaking selves. There is, however, a revelation about one character that does not sit easily with the rest of the play and left me wondering if I’d missed something significant. Rather than furthering the drama and character development, it took me out of the moment and made me question the intention behind its inclusion.

That said, English goes beyond simple questions about what it means to learn a new language and goes into more emotional territory. It explores what one needs to leave behind or give up with emigration. It asks who we are if we are dreaming of being somewhere else, whether that be home or away.

English runs at Kiln Theatre until 29 June 2024

Kiln Theatre 
269 Kilburn High Rd
London
NW6 7JR