As Trump Rains Down Terror On Iran, Sanaz Toossi's Pulitzer-winning ‘english’ Has Its L.a. Premiere

War has a measurement of curtailing imagination. When nan news breaks of faraway civilian casualties — an erroneous aerial onslaught connected a schoolhouse that relied connected outdated intelligence, for illustration — nan mind takes refuge successful abstractions and statistics.

Grief isn’t an infinite resource. There’s only truthful overmuch distant suffering anyone tin return in. Yet our civilized wellness arsenic a nine depends connected nan nickname of our communal humanity. We stock thing pinch nan inhabitants of those countries whose civilization our authorities has threatened to destroy.

This is an important infinitesimal to acquisition “English,” Sanaz Toossi’s Pulitzer Prize-winning drama, group successful an English-language schoolroom extracurricular of Tehran successful 2008. The play, now having its L.A. premiere astatine nan Wallis Annenberg Center for nan Performing Arts, reminds america of nan lives — nan hopes, nan dreams, nan sorrows — connected nan different broadside of nan headlines. (As I constitute this, nan New York Times homepage has a communicative that stopped maine dormant successful my tracks: ”Iranian Schools and Hospitals Are successful Ruins, Times Analysis Shows.”)

Babak Tafti, left, and Marjan Neshat successful “English” astatine The Wallis.

(Kevin Parry)

“English” isn’t trying to triumph immoderate governmental arguments. Its attraction is connected nan characters, who are successful a Test of English arsenic a Foreign Language (TOFL) prep class. The exam will person an oversize effect connected nan early possibilities of this small, mishmash group of students.

Elham (Tala Ashe) needs a precocious people to prosecute her aesculapian acquisition successful Australia. Roya (Pooya Mohseni) wants to subordinate her boy successful Canada to beryllium portion of her granddaughter’s life, but Persian is frowned upon successful her son’s assimilated, English-language household. Omid (Babak Tafti), whose English is acold beyond anyone else’s level successful nan class, has a U.S. greenish paper question and reply coming up. And Goli (Ava Lalezarzadeh), nan youngest of nan students, wants astatine nan very slightest to beryllium fluent successful nan lingua franca of American popular culture.

Marjan (Marjan Neshat), nan coach whose emotion for nan English connection is infused pinch longing and regret, harks backmost nostalgically connected her years successful Manchester earlier she returned to Iran. She insists for pedagogic reasons that nan students only speak English successful nan classroom. But Elham, a contentious and fiercely competitory student, suspects that Marjan’s zeal for anglophone culture, including Hollywood romanticist comedies, masks a resentment for nan Iranian life she is now stuck with. (Neshat and Ashe are gracefully reprising their Tony-nominated performances.)

Tala Ashe, left, and Pooya Mohseni successful “English” astatine The Wallis.

(Kevin Parry)

Mastering English tin unfastened doors, but what if you wish you didn’t person to locomotion done them? Elham is angry that she has to time off to prosecute her aesculapian dreams. When she speaks English, she feels for illustration a diminished type of herself. She calls her accent “a warfare crime,” and grows disappointment successful people that she can’t easy explicate what she’s reasoning and emotion successful her halting English.

The different students mightiness not beryllium arsenic truculent arsenic Elham, but they are conscionable arsenic ambivalent astir nan necessity of learning English. Toossi doesn’t grapple explicitly pinch nan fraught soul authorities of nan Iran of nan period. The speech successful nan schoolroom doesn’t move to nan repressive authorities aliases nan authorities request of headscarves aliases nan geopolitical strategies that person alienated nan Islamic Republic of Iran from nan world community.

When I saw “English” successful 2024 astatine nan Old Globe in San Diego, I was acutely alert of what nan playwright was not addressing. At nan Wallis successful 2026, successful nan aftermath of Operation Epic Fury and nan blitzkrieg of unhinged rhetoric from President Trump, whose rationales and goals for nan warfare look to alteration pinch each nationalist utterance, I was intensely appreciative of what Toossi was putting beforehand and halfway — nan variegated humanity of her characters.

Tala Ashe and Marjan Neshat successful “English” astatine nan Wallis.

(Kevin Parry)

This Atlantic Theater Company & Roundabout Theatre production, directed by Knud Adams, had a critically touted Broadway run, receiving 4 Tony nominations, including champion play. The beingness staging, featuring a rotating cube from group designer Martha Ginsberg, shows america nan schoolroom from different vantages, bringing nan play’s shifting position to three-dimensional life.

Toossi follows nan interplay of nan differing viewpoints and lived experiences. She’s not arsenic concerned pinch settling differences arsenic pinch knowing nan thoughts and emotions animating nan clashes of her divergent characters. The actors relish nan pesky, droll, often adorable, sometimes incendiary personality of their roles.

The play does thing unsocial pinch language. When a characteristic speaks English, an accent is employed and nan mode is often a spot stumbling. When a characteristic speaks Persian, nan English that is heard is earthy and relaxed, nan sound of a autochthonal speaker.

The consequence is that these Iranian characters, erstwhile talking among themselves successful their autochthonal tongue, sound awfully for illustration Americans having a speech successful nan promenade aliases astatine a adjacent array astatine a restaurant. We are nary longer separated by language. The conception of nan Iranian “other” falls by nan wayside.

The formed of “English” astatine nan Wallis.

(Kevin Parry)

It’s difficult not to wonderment if 1 of those missiles raining down connected schools successful caller weeks deed erstwhile Marjan was showing “Notting Hill” aliases different favourite rom-com to 1 of nan students she was hoping mightiness recognize her dreams of surviving abroad. Omid, whose English surpasses Marjan’s ain level, has excited specified hopes, and nan touchingly Chekhovian quasi-romance betwixt them adds a gentle statement of amorous wistfulness.

Adams’ accumulation creates a cinematic penumbra done nan projections of Ruey Horng Sun, a soundscape by Sinan Refik Zafar that lyrically underscores nan actions and nan emotionally attuned lighting of Reza Behjat. The effect heightens nan romanticism of characters who are nary longer mislaid to america successful translation.

But nan destination of nan play is little astir what these students sound for illustration to an American assemblage than what they sound for illustration to themselves. And that is simply a cosmopolitan travel that transcends moreover nan starkest barriers of language, civilization and politics.