English at the Kiln Theatre, review and star rating: ★★★★
“My accent is a war crime,” argues Elham in Sanaz Toosi’s English, a clever mind game of a play with a refreshingly simple set up. We’re in a classroom in Iran where four adults are learning English, but things turn complicated when the classmates question what the language, and their new dialect, means for their identities.
Omid has a strong grasp, he even knows what a “windbreaker” jacket is, giving teacher Marjan a run for her money, but not everyone is at his level: Elham has failed five important language tests. Toosi, who won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama for this play in 2023, has written five spectacularly well imagined individuals, and finds commendable depth way beyond these four walls. She takes us – in our imagination, through conversation – to the sorts of nail bitingly confrontational and hostile situations that crop up in environments where you don’t know the language, and where you can feel you don’t belong. She gets at the devastating effect that can have on your confidence, your sense of purpose, your sense of belonging.
There is the misery of being an outsider speaking another language – “you feel louder, your head hurts, the days go on longer” – and some nicely evocative perspectives on British culture laced with humour. The notion that, for instance, it “takes two people” for Iranians to understand Hugh Grant’s plummy accent.
Cleverly, Toosi has the cast speak in a British accent to mark when the classmates are speaking in Farsi, the Persian language spoken in Iran. When they speak with Iranian accents, that is their English. It means the British audience can understand everything happening on stage, bar a section in Farsi at the end that puts us in the character’s outsider position.
There are some knockout performances, particularly from Nadia Albina, whose energy transfer from professional teacher Marjam to ball of insecurity Marjam is flawless and heartbreaking, to Nojan Khazai’s Omid, who perversely has to prove his right to attend the class because his English might be too good. Director Diyan Zora has a light but confident touch.
If you are native-speaking and have the privilege of having never needed to find another tongue, watch this: we English speakers are wiser to have witnessed this often uncomfortable, explosive and emotional battle.
English plays at the Kiln Theatre until 29 June
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