"Both contemplative and comic, it nails every opportunity for big laughs as its English-learning characters struggle with accents and idioms. But the laughter provides cover for the deeper idea that their struggle is not just linguistic...In dealing with characters who could easily be exoticized in their chadors, Toossi has chosen instead to focus on their familiarity; like most of us, they deal less with the disaster of geopolitics than with an atmosphere of mild if daily discomfort."
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"5/5 stars...That one play can accomplish as much with wit, ease, precision, and heart, as 'English' does in a swift 115 minutes, makes it among the best new plays of the season...Toossi approaches big, thorny questions with an expertly light touch, rooting her play’s intricacies in well-shaded characters. But take a slight step back and the full picture comes into view — a stunning meditation on what makes us human."
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"The play, like a language lesson, is therefore full of games; it requires humor (Lalezarzadeh nails this) and a sure step. But although Knud Adams’s production looks gorgeous — Marsha Ginsberg sets them inside a huge rotating classroom that responds to Reza Behjat’s lighting like a sculpture — its pace is too lugubrious for Toossi’s quickfoot dramaturgy."
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"Toossi has found a fantastically effective way to depict the double self of the novice language learner: when her characters are 'speaking' Farsi, we hear quick, idiomatic American English, but, when they speak English itself, their voices slow down, and their accents grow thick. There’s an obvious political valence, which Toossi treats lightly but attentively, as when Marjan asks her students to 'feel any pull you have to your Iranian-ness and let it go.'"
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"Not everything is explicit, mysteries are allowed to linger, and the unsaid regularly hovers over the stage in moments of exquisite dramatic tension. 'English' feels like a breath of fresh air when so many new plays seem to follow a thesis with which the playwright delights in bludgeoning the audience. It's a remarkably mature off-Broadway debut for Toossi."
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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.
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"Beautifully directed by Knud Adams with welcome touches of levity and cultural humor...Despite a handful of contrivances in Toossi's writing, as well as a couple of head-scratching eleven o'clock revelations, the cast is uniformly superb, with rich portraits of complex characters created by everyone on stage. Adams' adroit direction gets out of the way of his talented actors, providing a showcase for their exceptional gifts."
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"4/5 stars...Toossi is not interested in heavy dramatics—and director Knud Adams serves her well in that aspiration. Through the many scenes she’s written as the six-week course advances, nothing of explosive import occurs...'English' is especially pertinent when increasingly so many of us aren’t speaking the same language, such as, for one prominent contemporary example, the language of truth in contention with the language of lies."
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