by Christine Sarkes

It’s well past time to pay tribute to Artistic Director Joseph Haj’s vision to bring inclusive and relevant theater to the Guthrie Theater and in English, now through August 18, he has succeeded once again. “A good season for us feels like it has arms widely around our community, that there’s something in that season for every,” said Haj in a recent interview with MPR News. We have been consistently impressed with the Guthrie Theater’s ability to stage entertaining and of-the-moment theater fare that both delights and transforms its audiences. English effortlessly weaves humor with social commentary and has easily moved into my top twenty list of all-time favorite plays. It is timeless in its exploration of the immigrant/emigrant experience, the struggle to maintain cultural identity as the ‘other’ in society and the politics of English as a colonizing language.

Iranian American Sanaz Toossi’s 2023 Pulitzer Prize-winning play is brilliantly heartfelt, funny and profound. It centers on the often-painful challenges of learning a new language, adapting to foreign cultures, reintegrating with old ones and merging clashing identities. The ensemble performances are magnificent; the actors imbue their characters with so much heart and nuance that I grew to love them, even the difficult ones.

The play centers on four students and their teacher (Sahar Bibiyan as Roya, Nikki Massoud as Elham, Roxanna Hope Radja as Marjan, Pej Vahdat as Omid and Shadee Vossoughi as Goli) in Karaj, Iran, in 2009, as they strive to pass an English proficiency test using an English-only learning method. Marjan (Radja) is the language teacher we wished we’d had in high school. She is positive, supportive and uses interactive methods to make learning fun. We also learn as the class progresses that each student has their own complex relationship with the two languages, fellow classmates and the outside world. The play uses a clever device to differentiate between spoken ‘Farsi’ and English. Language-learners in the audience will relate to the students’ frustration as they try to make themselves understood in both.

Radja, Bibiyan (Roya) Nikki Massoud (Elham) gave the most wrenching and nuanced performances as they navigate growing pressure to learn and teach to a testing deadline. Career, family and identity hang in the balance. My companion and I loved Bibiyan’s subtle physical cues to her character’s inner turmoil and unspoken opinion of her fellow students. Vossoughi as Goli is laugh-out-loud funny as the delightfully optimistic, slightly clueless youngest member of the class. Vahdat (Omid) is the class pet with his own hidden motivation for taking the class.

Kudos also to the creative team and the simple, yet evocative stage design and use of media. I loved the mixing of Western and Iranian music and movie clips to signal character development and exposition.

English, with creative team Sanaz Toossi (Playwright), Hamid Dehghani (Director), Courtney O’Neill (Scenic Designer), Shahrzad Mazaheri (Costume Designer), Jason Lynch (Lighting Designer), Mikaal Sulaiman (Sound Designer), Keely Wolter (Vocal Coach), Yasmin Zacaria Mikhaiel (Dramaturg), Vaneh Assadourian (Dialect Coach).  Now through August 18 at the Guthrie Theater, 818 South 2nd Street, Minneapolis. Single tickets range from $29 to $82. Single and group tickets (minimum requirement of 15 per group) may be purchased through the Box Office at 612.377.2224 (single), 1.877.447.8243 (toll-free), 612.225.6244 (group) or online at guthrietheater.org.