Review: In ‘English,’ Looking for a Language to Live In

Some plays are bouillabaisses, crammed with everything a playwright can put in the pot. Even if it means splattering the stovetop, these stories are going to boil.

Other plays are perfectly calibrated consommés. Refined and subtle, they shine at a simmer.

The Broadway transfer of Sanaz Toossi’s “English,” which opened on Thursday at the Todd Haimes Theater, is the consummate consommé. Even more so than when it debuted Off Broadway in 2022, and won the Pulitzer Prize in Drama in 2023, it strikes me as a work of uncommon discipline despite its big and occasionally easy laughs. Without ever releasing a tight grip on its theme — or perhaps because of that tight grip — it suggests a world of small tragedies and smaller compensations.

The theme is the conflict between mother tongues and other tongues. Over six weeks in 2008, as four Farsi-speaking adults at a small school in Iran prepare for the Test of English as a Foreign Language, or Toefl, they and their teacher struggle with the often humorous mechanics of initial w’s and definite articles. (One does not say “the Canada,” for instance.) But in reaching for opportunities to remake themselves in a new language, they also bump up against the limits created by the one they already know.

That isn’t a problem for Goli (Ava Lalezarzadeh). Just 18, she has no goal in acquiring English except to enjoy the easy practicality and cultural currency of the international lingua franca. “English does not want to be poetry like Farsi,” she says approvingly. “English does not try to sink.” For Show and Tell, she plays a CD of Ricky Martin’s “She Bangs” on her boombox.

The other students find the burden of imperfect English heavy. Elham (Tala Ashe) has the hardest time achieving proficiency, despite needing it most. (Her acceptance to a medical school in Australia is conditioned on achieving a good Toefl score.) Roya (Pooya Mohseni) wants to master the language so she can live with her neglectful son in Canada. (He will not allow his Canadian-born daughter to be influenced by Roya’s thick accent.) And though Omid (Hadi Tabbal) is already glib in English and sounds fully American to everyone else, he knows the truth in his own inner ear.