English, Melbourne Theatre company, Playhouse, Canberra Theatre Centre, 5-7 Sept

 

Sanaz Toossi's play was the winner of last year's Pulitzer Prize for drama - a tight comedy-drama about four students in an English-Second-Language class in Tehran, it uses a device where when characters are speaking English they use strong Iranian accents, and when not, they use the performer's natural accent. It's, as the concept suggests, a show looking at language, and how it affects how people express themselves beyond the immediately obvious - and about how the character's relationship to another culture affects them. It's a rich array of characters - all four students are learning for different reasons, and Toossi's script gives them plenty of room to breathe and explore themselves as it plays out moment by moment.

Director Tasmin Hossein gives this a naturalistic sheen as the various exercises present different challenges to the student. The set by Kat Chan is a simple small classroom with whiteboards, clicks and institutional chairs, a simple learning environment for the performers to play out their challenges, and the direction finds the meaning in small moments of tension and release.

Of the five cast members, Maia Abbas emerges strongly as the character most challenged by the English language, Elham - not because of her proficiency so much as a profound cultural identity crisis within her. Abbas gives the character wit, energy, and vigour as her challenges come more and more to the fore. Elsewhere, Osamah Sami as the english-proficient Omid has a lot of charm and handles his own counter-acting cultural issues intriguingly, and Salme Garensar as the instructor, Marjan, has a polite demeanor that proves steely when challenged, leading to a professional crisis and confession of her own issues. Delaram Ahmadi has a gentle charm to her as the hardworking student Goli who tries to stay out of the identiy issues but struggles, and Marjan Meshabi is quietly heartbreaking as the mother trying to catch up to her son who has moved to Canada but unaware how much he has already left her behind. 

This is a strong, powerful play that got a little lost in the crush of multiple productions last weekend - I saw it too late in the season for my review to do it any good, hence the delay, but it's the kind of thing I hope we see more tours of.