Theatre in Review: English (Atlantic Theater Company/Roundabout Theatre Company)Even if she didn't have such a sharp eye and ear for her characters' accidental moments of revelation, the playwright Sanaz Toossi would be a most welcome addition to the season because, unlike many of her colleagues, she shows us something we don't already know. Since the theatres reopened last fall, we have had an influx of right-thinking plays, each assiduously devoted to exposing racism, antisemitism, homophobia, and various forms of social and economic inequity. Many are quite effective but, mostly, they are dedicated to re-affirming propositions with which the audience is most likely already in broad agreement. It's a little bit like picking the Times op-ed section: You already know what each columnist is likely to say on any given topic. Even when you agree, the effect is rather dulling. You'll find none of this at English, now at the Atlantic. Instead, you'll be immersed in a setting far, far from our own way of life. You'll also get an oblique view of American power that will guarantee you leave the theatre with your expectations overturned. It's a quiet play but it gets under your skin and shakes you up a bit. It's a bracing experience. The action unfolds in a language school in a provincial Iranian city in 2008. Marjan, the kindly, sunny teacher, presides over a quartet of students learning English. Goli, a sweet-natured eighteen-year-old, is, charmingly, first seen giving a show-and-tell presentation about eyebrow liner. Elham, a spiky, argumentative medical student in her late twenties, is eager to continue her studies in Australia but is lumbered by the language barrier. Roya, in her middle years, wants to communicate with her infant grandson, whom she expects to visit in Canada. Omid, the only man in the group, says he is studying for his green card examination -- although, interestingly, he is far more fluent than the others; there's a reason for that. Toossi easily solves the technical problem of bilingual characters by using exclusively English dialogue. When the characters are meant to be speaking Farsi, they are in command of their words; turning to English, their speech becomes halting, awkward, as they struggle with tenses and fumble for the right words. It deftly demonstrates the demands of learning a different language, especially how it hobbles one's ability to think and express oneself clearly. Constructed out of a series of offhand exchanges and small insights, English is something of a slow starter but hang on: Toossi patiently builds a web of conflicts and buried emotions that points to a larger, thornier reality. All four students are prepping for the Test of English as a Foreign Language; a good grade will provide them with access abroad -- a proposition that, increasingly, seems to exact a troublingly high price. Elham is amusingly self-deprecating ("My accent is a war crime") but, underneath, she is boiling with frustration, having taken the TOEFL test five times with unsatisfactory results. ("You hate this language," Marjan observes. "You put in such a fight.") Roya's distaste for her studies grows as the date of her visit with her son and his family keeps receding; in a surprising outburst, she forces her classmates to listen to a Farsi song, adding, with barely controlled indignation, "We should remember that we come from this. And our voluntary migration from this is something we should be grieving." Marjan and Omid draw close, bonding over viewings of Merchant-Ivory films and Julia Roberts comedies, but she is married, and he is not entirely what he seems. Indeed, the language class functions as a kind of metaphor for the challenge of living in a world dominated by Western culture. It may be one thing for an English speaker to learn, say, a Romance language; it's another thing altogether to master the vocabulary and syntax of an entirely different civilization, especially one that dominates the world. In Toossi's view, language is hegemony; in learning English, her characters are giving away more of themselves than they intend. Pursuing their dreams may unexpectedly end in spiritual exile. All of this is portrayed with deep sympathy and insight, along with an offhand humor that catches you when you least expect it. The director Knud Adams works wonders with an extraordinary ensemble gifted at expressing the unsaid. Marjan Neshat, so impressive as the frantic heroine of Selling Kabul at Playwrights Horizons a few months ago, etches a strikingly different portrait as Marjan, whose serene manner masks a hundred hinted-at sorrows, including a possibly troubled marriage and a years-long sojourn in Manchester, England, that ended for reasons she won't discuss. She strikes real sparks with Hadi Tabbal, who is engaging and faintly mysterious as Omid. Tala Ashe nails Elham's natural impatience, spiked with an undertone of desperation. In an especially tense moment, she demands that Marjan apologize to her in Farsi, something the latter refuses to do. If Ava Lalezarzadeh has less to do as Goli, she is a beguilingly unaffected presence. As Roya, Pooya Mohseni has the face of a medieval martyr and a subtle, but unmistakable, way of signaling disapproval; she chills the room by calmly telling Marjan, "You talk about Farsi like it's a stench after a long day's work." Marsha Ginsberg's set, which uses a turntable to reveal the classroom from different angles along with a corridor and the building's exterior, is lit with an uncommon sensitivity to mood and time of day by Reza Behjat. Enver Charkatash's costumes feel authentic and Sinan Refik Zafar's sound design makes affecting use of late-Romantic classical music (by, I think, Debussy) to strike an elegiac mood. English requires a bit of patience; Toossi is painstaking about casting her spell and she is not to be hurried. But it is well worth it; by the final fadeout, it's likely you'll feel intimately acquainted with these characters. And you'll have a better sense of what it's like to live in a world where cultures bump up against each other so uncomfortably. Sanaz Toossi is a real find. --David Barbour 
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