English – A Play by Sanaa Toosi

After missing watching this play when it first came out I was lucky enough to be able to secure a ticket to watch the play English when I came back to Broadway with the original cast and director and was put on by the same theatre company, Roundabout Theatre. As an immigrant who has lived in multiple different continents I have been lucky enough to move to a country where the first and official language was always English so I never had to translate any words before I said them or find myself in a position where the word I had in my mind was so rich and meaningful that I could never find a translation for it in English as there was no single word to encapsulate that exact meaning. I have of course, dealt with the accent differentiation and being an outsider and other. Which as the play goes on, is something that is explored. The play is about a classic Iran being taught for non native speakers to learn the English language and be able to pass their TOEFL exam so that they may attend a college in Australia, or live with their son in Canada or go to the US to live a better life. The class is taught by an Iranian woman who herself lived in Manchester, United Kingdom for about 9 years before moving back. She speaks perfect English and has the correct accent and seemed to even have fitted in and stopped feeling like an outsider when one day someone asked her for instructions to get somewhere, thinking that she was a local. Despite that, her students and we the audience, ask why has she moved back and does she miss the UL