LOST IN TRANSLATION—
AND INTENTION

Pulitzer winner that provokes, puzzles,
and occasionally frustrates.
Is it a scream into a void or a play?

English, by Sanaz Toossi, won the 2023 Pulitzer Prize for drama. It racked up five Tony nominations. Critics nationwide tout it. Yet, in spite of Atlantic and Roundabout’s handsome co-production, now on stage at The Wallis in Beverly Hills with most of the Broadway cast, I find myself wondering why it gets so much praise.

On its surface, the play is rather straightforward. Set in 2008 Karaj, Iran, the show focuses on an advanced English course led by Marjan (Marjan Neshat), who has returned to the country of her birth after residing in Manchester, England, with her husband. She faces four students seeking to master English: Matriarchal Roya (Pooya Mohseni) hopes to move to Canada to be with her Farsi-rejecting son and his family, especially her new granddaughter, who knows only English; Hyper-teen Goli (Ava Lalezarzadeh) yearns to be fluent in “Gen-Z-ish”; Glum-faced pre-med student Elham’s (Tala Ashe) future depends on mastering a language she despises; and class savant Omid (Babak Tafti) provides obligatory sensual tension.

We first see Marjan’s classroom through a storefront window. Designer Marsha Ginsberg’s impressive set is a cube that rotates to reveal the interior, and, later, passage of time. I love this sort of theatrical razzle-dazzle, but director Knud Adams allows it to overwhelm what should be an intimate play of character studies, feeling less like cutting-edge stagecraft than a magician’s tried-and-true misdirection. Enhancing the arena-acrobatics are Reza Behjat’s lighting, Sinan Refik Zafar’s melodious piano scoring, but, regrettably, the set’s operating gears are loud enough to be in a Transformers movie.

Attention would have proved more profitable if given to other aspects of the drama. Marjan has carved her One Commandment on the room’s whiteboard: “English Only.” The frustrated students, save Omid, accumulate demerits when breaking into Farsi. These breaks, the audience is meant to understand, are represented when characters replace their slow, heavily-accented “talking-English” with “now-talking-Farsi” in a relaxed, fluent American English. It took a while to get it, and I overheard someone after the curtain say they never did. (Brian Friel’s Translations used the same trick.)

Critics have observed that English, Toossi’s second play, which she describes as a “scream into the void” in response to President Trump’s 2017 Muslim ban (and written for a graduate thesis), gives little time to exploring the benefits of fluency in other languages. They excuse this as “just not Toossi’s point,” but it should have been addressed. “To learn a language, you have to be willing to abase yourself,” argues one of the students. It’s an argument, but not a good one. A full, honest examination of multiple sides is a hallmark of superior writing. The poet Rumi said, “Words are a pretext. It is the inner bond that draws one person to another, not words.” Toossi’s characters are single-mindedly focused on words and what gets lost in translation, without seeing that being limited to one language limits one’s world. Displaying a single perspective on stage is not a drama but a rally.

Toossi’s characters are brimming with passion, but it is passion expressed without much discipline or control. Whether it fully earns its place as a play is another matter. The final lines are spoken entirely in Farsi, with no translation offered. Farsi is a beautiful language to hear. Understanding, however, is more important—and far more satisfying. I won’t say the play is poorly written, but it’s frustrating, which may be just as problematic. English is an attention-grabber. It is dramatic. So is a scream.

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photos by Cherly Mann

English
Atlantic Theater & Roundabout Theatre Production
Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts
Bram Goldsmith Theater, 9390 N. Santa Monica Blvd, Beverly Hills
Tue–Fri at 7:30; Sat at 2 & 7:30; Sun at 2 & 7
ends on April 26, 2026
for tickets (starting at $53.90), call 310.746.4000 or visit The Wallis

for more shows, visit Theatre in Los Angeles

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