Daniel Evans and Tamara Harvey’s opening season as co-directors of the RSC continues with a second first. After “a carnival adaptation” of Hanif Kureshi’s novel The Buddha of Suburbia, co-written by the author along with director Emma Rice (and reviewed by my colleague Susannah Clapp), is this European premiere of Sanaz Toossi’s 2023 Pulitzer prize-winning play, English.
Anisha Fields’s set is, unmistakably, a classroom: a frosted-glass wall, neon strip lighting, metal-legged tables, plastic bucket chairs and a whiteboard next to a door. Into the space strides Marjan. Beneath the heading “TOEFL – Test of English as a Foreign Language”, she writes: “English Only”, then underlines the words, once, twice, three times. Lightly played by Nadia Albina, this is deliciously funny. As the action progresses, however, the imperative instruction becomes a motor for identity crises and personality clashes among the characters (who speak English throughout: fluently when communicating in their native Farsi; haltingly in the target language).
We are in Iran, 2008. Of Marjan’s four adult students, three claim pressing reasons for sitting the test (not all are telling the truth). Roya wants to join her son and his family in an anglophone area of Canada; they insist she learn English, the only language they speak to her granddaughter (her pain movingly conveyed by Lanna Joffrey). Omid is preparing for his green card interview for the US. Elham wants to study and teach medicine; she has decided to apply to a course in Australia, but hates the English language and deeply resents its dominance, wishing that, instead, the Persian empire had kept growing, so that “all of us would speak Farsi”. Serena Manteghi’s fiery Elham is in acute conflict with anglophiles Goli (young and searching for her place in the world) and Marjan (nostalgic for her nine years in Manchester).
Diyan Zora’s clear but overly respectful direction gives us time to realise that the characters, while initially interesting, are too obviously tailored to fit a schematic structure. Judicious cuts and faster pacing would better serve the strengths of the company and the ambitions of the text.
