"English"
Tipping Point Theatre
Northville
March 13, 2025
For native English speakers, it’s easy to take communication for granted. English is the common tongue for international exchange, and we usually have the privilege to pursue personal or professional dreams without even considering the need to learn a second language. But beyond communication, language is also tied to personal identity, which is the concept explored in Sanaz Toossi’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play “English.” The show, which is directed by Suzi Regan, is playing now at Northville’s Tipping Point Theatre until April 6.
The story takes place in an English language class in Iran. Adult students are studying to take the Test of English as a Foreign Language – more commonly known as the “TOEFL” – that will offer them English certification needed for various reasons. The four-person class includes Omid (Artun Kircali), who is looking for a green card; Goli (Chloe Matta), who is trying to keep her options open when applying to colleges; Roya (Jean Zarzour), who wants to communicate with her Canadian grandchild; and Elham (Joelle Denhof), a frustrated repeat student trying to get into an Australian medical school. At the head of it all is Marjan (Sarab Kamoo), their energetic, patient teacher who continually reminds her students to use “English only” as she shares her enthusiasm for the language and Western culture.
As we begin Week 1 of the six-week course, the show opens with ease. We laugh along with the characters as they go through stumbles familiar to anyone who has learned a new language. As the weeks continue, however, we see a direct correlation between the students’ improving language skills and their increasing struggles with personal identity, felt particularly by Elham and Roya, expertly portrayed by Denhof and Zarzour.
Elham – who has secretly failed the test five times – resents the language, viewing it solely as an unavoidable barrier to overcome to reach her goals. Marjan’s attempts to get her to embrace the language only bring out the worst in her, to the point where she expresses in Farsi to the class that she really is a good person, but not in English. Denhof dominates as a competitive, conflicted young woman who hates the fact that she must give up her language and culture to achieve her professional goals.
Roya just wants to be closer to her grandchild, but her Canadian resident son has implemented a condition that she must learn English first. Her big and sometimes generationally-clueless personality is charming, and Zarzour’s portrayal makes her one of the funniest characters of the show – one I wish we had more of. Her story is also the most heartbreaking; we share her feelings of personal rejection from a son who has severed ties with his homeland in apparent search for greener pastures.
Roya and Elham, especially, challenge Marjan’s loyalty to their culture. As Marjan speaks fondly of her nine years in England, where they called her “Mary,” Roya – whose own son now goes by “Nate” – poignantly says, “Our mothers name us, not foreigners.” Isolated and lonely in her English and England nostalgia, Marjan struggles to maintain these ties and start to embrace her native culture. Kamoo soars in the role. Her warm, passionate, encouraging teaching style makes her immediately endearing, and you feel her struggle to maintain that energy and professionalism as her students push back.
The entire cast is fantastic. The show is almost entirely spoken in English, but the transition between English and Farsi is cleverly conveyed through accent. When the characters are speaking English, they speak with an Iranian accent, but when they are speaking "Farsi," they use unaccented American English, whose smooth, effortless parlance emphasizes the ease and depth of expression available when using one’s Mother Tongue. The cast’s ease in switching between the two accents is impressive and makes it easy to understand what’s happening in the scene.
Many English speakers have studied a second language at some point in their lives, either through school or in preparation for travel. So the learning challenges in “English” may be relatable to many. But the difference between learning a language for school or pleasure is palpably different from learning a language out of necessity, when the consequences of not learning are much higher.
“English” makes that distinction clear and invites an audience – likely made up of people who have taken language for granted – to see language and identity in a new way. Tipping Point's production is funny, compelling and thought-provoking, and an overall incredible piece of theater.
