After nine years in Manchester, Marjan (Marjan Neshat) has returned home to Iran, where she teaches a class that prepares students for the TOEFL (Test of English as a Foreign Language).  This term, she has four: Elham (Tala Ashe), who needs to pass the test to attend medical school in Australia; Omid (Hadi Tabbal), who wants a green card to visit his cousins in Ohio; Roya (Pooya Mohseni), who wants to meet and be able to speak to her granddaughter, now living in Toronto; and Goli (Ava Lalezarzadeh), who is infatuated with learning the language.

Sanaz Toossi’s English uses this classroom to explore her characters’ ambiguous feelings about their nationality.  Each lives a life defined by whether they leave or stay: the first offers opportunities for gain, the second the comfort of familiarity and home.  Some find freedom in the new language, some restriction and a betrayal of their heritage.

The actors are strong, rendering their characters with warmth.  Though most of the play is spoken in English, they register the shift between languages through their accents: their English stumbles, their Farsi flows.  The rotating, cubic set, designed by Marsha Ginsberg, frames them well and prevents them from drowning in a large, open stage.

Overall, this is a modest, enjoyable story about the effects of linguistic globalization.

English runs through March 2nd at the Todd Haimes Theatre.  227 W. 42nd Street  New York, NY.  1 hour 40 minutes.  No intermission. Photograph by Maria Baranova.