THE TRANSATLANTIC MAGAZINE
THE TRANSATLANTIC MAGAZINE
By Sanaz Toossi
Kiln Theatre, 269 Kilburn High Road, London NW6 7JR, until June 29, 2024
Sanaz Toossi is an Iranian-American writer from Orange County, California and she received the Pulitzer Prize for this quiet, witty, gem of a play, a co-production between the Kiln in Kilburn and the RSC where this production had its European premiere in May at The Other Place.
The setting is a drab community college type classroom in Iran where four very different students are grappling with their 'English as a Foreign Language' course. Toossi uses this as a starting point to explore themes of belonging, of home, of assimilation vs integration, and more profoundly about what mastering a second language does to us as individuals.
At one stage Omid (Nojan Khazai), the only male in the group, says to the teacher Marjan (Nadia Albina) "Do you ever think who you'd be if you never had to think about staying or leaving" – and what could better encapsulate the dilemma of the emigrant?
She's rather smitten with him and her favoritism in the class seriously rubs up on Elham (Serena Manteghi) an ambitious young 'A' student, who hates English and resents having to learn it, but needs it for her medical career ambitions in Australia. By contrast, Omid finds the language easy which annoys her even more and draws out her competitive instinct.
Middle-aged Roya (Lanna Joffrey) finds it all agonizing. She's learning at the behest of her son in Canada who cruelly insists she must speak English to his young daughter. Joffrey beautifully captures the pain of a grandmother's battle for affirmation, a pain which curdles in her, driving her back to the comfort of her Persian music recordings and railing against being submerged by another culture. Goli (Sara Hazemi), the youngest student, is keen and wide eyed and amusingly for a 'show and tell' uses a Shakira song as her touchstone for improving her English. There's witty use of bootleg videos of Julia Roberts and 'Bridget Jones' romcoms which all help with English comprehension.
Toossi cleverly delineates the few necessary Farsi sections (also played in English) from those where the class speak in English and of course, as in any TEFL classes, there is a strict 'English only' rule which Marjan enforces with sanctions.
She is great too on the blessings a second language can bestow. How it rewires our brains, and how our new 'voice' creates almost an alternative persona for us, which for some might be a liberation but for others a cage. You can't be the same person, Marjan bemoans, and "Imagine thirty years without ever making anyone laugh" is how she cleverly sums up the situation whereby you don't really live a new language until you have mastered its use of humor.
Albina brings a quiet soulfulness to the rather solitary figure of Marjan. She reminisces about her nine years in Manchester. While returning to a family who don't speak any English and are indifferent to it, leaving her feeling frustrated and unfulfilled, she missed her own culture too much to keep going. Instead, she relives 'the West' in her classes. In the classroom she flits around, bubbling with enthusiasm, trying out various ploys to keep the students motivated, not an easy task when the skill levels aren't evenly distributed and they all have very different motivations for being there.
Diyan Zora's direction is crisp and unfussy, and she draws out great performances from this ensemble. It's a poignant exploration of the pains of emigration and the hunger for belonging, all the more necessary to reflect on in these times.
